US delegates dropped a bombshell at the Asian and Pacific Population Conference in late October. They announced that the US would withdraw its support for the"action plan" devised at the 1994 United Nations Population and Development Conference in Cairo, and endorsed by 177 countries, unless the terms "reproductive health services" and "reproductive rights" were removed from it.
The US delegates argued that these terms "could be construed" to mean abortion services. The US administration will not support any program which endorses a woman's right to choose abortion.
Washington's war on abortion started just days after President George Bush took office in January 2001 and has continued unabated. Washington does not care that, in attempting to outlaw legal abortions around the globe, it has also destroyed many basic reproductive health programs for women.
A day after taking office, Bush enacted legislation cutting US aid money to international groups which perform or "discuss" abortion. This has de-funded family planning programs and free condom provision around the globe.
In May, the US blocked with Syrian and Iranian delegates at the UN special session on children to lobby, unsuccessfully, for the worldwide adoption of abstinence-only sex education programs.
In July, Bush withdrew its entire US$34 million worth of aid from the UN population fund (UNFPA). The money had already been allocated by a vote of Congress. The administration justified this by arguing that the money was being used to fund forced sterilisations and abortions in China. It based this allegation on the fact that UNFPA had worked with China's State Family Planning Commission (SPFC), which has supported such programs in parts of China.
A US State Department delegation sent to investigate concluded that UNFPA was not involved in supporting or funding coercive programs. Bush has ignored this finding.
Aside from denying UNFPA a significant chunk of its funding, the decision terrified many feminist population activists because it could set a precedent. Other UN agencies working with SPFC include the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organisation and the UN Development Program (not to mention the World Bank!).
In the first week of November, the State Department revealed it had frozen aid money to the WHO's Human Reproduction Program because of its involvement in testing the abortificant RU-486.
The Cairo plan for action was a gain for women, if only mainly a rhetorical one. Although not binding on signatories, it called for widely accessible health care, reduction in maternal mortality, universal access to primary education for girls, equality of job access for women and sex education to reduce the spread of HIV infection. It was groundbreaking in that it linked limiting population growth to providing women with better reproductive and social controls.
Although it did not recommend that abortion be legalised, it did recommend that where it is legal, it should be safe.
Until now, in documents mentioning the plan, the US has added a footnote in relevant sections explaining that "in [the US] view, reproductive health does not include support for abortion".
Of course, it does! Just as social choices, such as education and employment, can determine women's reproductive choices, so too is access to reproductive choices essential for women to access better education and jobs. The two are intertwined.
To demand, as the Christian fundamentalist Bush administration tries to, that only women who abstain from sex have the right to choose to be childless is offensive and downright stupid. Aside from assuming that rape is unknown, it places ridiculous moral restrictions on women.
Even to argue, as many do, that women have a right to contraception, but not abortion, ignores that many women cannot access contraception, or that circumstances in women's lives may change after they become pregnant.
Washington's opposition to the Cairo plan's language reveals its opposition to the emancipation of women throughout the world.
Ironically, while Bush has praised what the US has done for women in Afghanistan, that country has the highest rate of childbirth-related deaths in the world.
The toughening of the criteria is not surprising when the delegation is considered. One of the US delegates, John Klink, represented the Vatican at the 1994 Cairo conference, where he opposed the plan for its "tacit support for abortion".
The US State Department told the media on November 14 that US policy on the question has not been finally determined, but that "it is possible" that Washington will pull out of the plan.
BY ALISON DELLIT
From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.
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