U.S.-POPULATION: Congress Clears Population Funding

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 1997 (IPS) - In a rare defeat for anti-abortion forces in Congress, the U.S. Senate Tuesday cleared the early release by President Bill Clinton of tens of millions of dollars in overseas family-planning aid beginning Mar 1.

In a 53-46 vote, half a dozen Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in approving Clinton’s finding that withholding the aid until July would actually increase the number of abortions worldwide.

“With this vote, the Senate has demonstrated that common sense — backed up by solid facts — can still carry the day,” declared Victoria Markell, vice president of Population Action International (PAI), a thinktank which supports family planning.

Another advocate, Werner Fornos of the Population Institute, said the vote can “be celebrated by those who understand the importance of universal access to family planning, as well as those who believe it is important to reduce the incidence of abortion worldwide.”

The Senate’s action, which followed a similar vote by the more anti-abortion House of Representatives two weeks ago, will enable the Clinton administration to begin disbursing 385 million dollars in aid for overseas family-planning programmes on Saturday.

The upper chamber declined to take up another House-passed measure, sponsored by abortion arch-foe Rep. Christopher, which would deny any of the funding to foreign groups which perform or support abortion, or even lobby foreign governments to ease restrictions on abortion.

If adopted, Smith’s bill, would have reinstated the family- planning policies — called the “Mexico City Policy” — of presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

By denying U.S. foreign aid to any agency which supports the use of abortion, the Mexico City policy choked off funds to some of the world’s biggest providers of family-planning aid, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). In one of his first acts as president, Clinton cancelled the Mexico City policy.

Several Democratic senators had warned they would “filibuster” the Smith measure if it was presented. A procedural manoeuvre, a filibuster allows opponents to kill any bill by preventing it from coming to a vote. Only 40 votes are needed to sustain a filibuster.

Even if the Smith measure had passed the Senate, Clinton would undoubtedly have vetoed it, according to aides on Capitol Hill. “There was no point in pursuing this,” said one after the vote.

As in the often acrimonious House debate, the Senate’s vote turned on how the issue was framed. Opponents argued that the resolution would increase U.S. support for abortions abroad.

“If the Senate passes the President’s resolution,” warned Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican floor leader, “123 million dollars more in funding will be available for organisations that support abortions and lobby to undermine laws which protect the unborn.”

But supporters insisted that the vote was really about making more conventional family-planning techniques more accessible to poor couples, thus reducing the need and incidence of abortions.

“This vote is a referendum on how the Senate views family planning,” said Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold. “Does the Senate support the provision of family planning services to women and men in the developing world, or does it not?”

In response, Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, added: “To vote against this resolution is to vote against the health of women and children, and to force more women to have abortions.”

The debate over abortion, which has raged in the United States since abortion under legalised in 1973, has also had a major impact on U.S. overseas population policy. Long the world’s single biggest source of family-planning aid in the Third World, Washington has banned recipients from using any of that money for abortions for almos: 25 years.

When Republicans gained the White House in 1981, they maintained Washington’s status as the world’s biggest provider of family-planning aid even as they moved to exclude certain recipients under what became the Mexico City policy. The policy was also used to press the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) to reduce its support of China’s population programme which allegedly included coercive abortions.

When Clinton was elected in 1992, he quickly cancelled the policy and pledged to substantially increase funding for population activities abroad. But after Republicans swept the House of Representatives in the 1994 elections, they launched new efforts to restrict the flow of U.S. population assistance.

With a rock-solid majority, which included some conservative Democrats, Smith and his backers stalled passage of the 1996 foreign aid bill for half a year before agreeing to a compromise by which population funding was cut from from 549 million dollars to 381 million dollars — a 35 percent reduction.

In addition, the administration was forced to delay disbursement of that aid nine months until July 1, 1996 and then dole it out at a rate of only 6.7 percent of the total each month over 15 months. The result was a dramatic decline in the flow of aid — more than an 85 percent reduction compared with 1995.

The 1997 foreign aid bill, passed late last year, approved 385 million dollars in total population assistance, but, as before, required a delay in its disbursement until July 1, 1997.

It offered one limited loophole: if Clinton certified by the end of last month that the delay was crippling family-planning programmes in the field, he could ask Congress to release the funds appopriated for 1997 March 1.

On Jan. 31, Clinton signed the certification which predicted that further delay in disbursement would lead to “a rise in unintended pregnancies and maternal deaths and a tragic recourse to unsafe and unsanitary methods to terminate those pregnancies.”

Smith countered the certification by introducing his own resolution to re-impose the Mexico City policy. With 37 anti- abortion Democrats voting in favour, the resolution sailed through 231-194.

But with Democrats willing to filibuster Smith’s ploy, and Clinton prepared to veto it, it had no chance in the Senate.