In a string of recent policy statements on international family planning, the Bush administration has sided with the Vatican, as well as "axis of evil" countries Iran and Iraq and others not known for their support of women's rights, including Libya, Sudan and Syria, according to the most recent issue of The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. The recent decision to deny funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is just the latest of these decisions, which, according to the article "The President's Overseas Reproductive Health Policy: Think Locally, Act Globally," by Susan Cohen of The Alan Guttmacher Institute, result from the administration's efforts to satisfy extremely conservative domestic lobby groups.
Both organizational and governmental spokespeople have sharply criticized the United States' position. Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition, stated, "This alliance shows the depths of perversity of the [U.S.] position. On the one hand we're presumably blaming these countries for unspeakable acts of terrorism, and at the same time we are allying ourselves with them in the oppression of women." Bert Anciaux, Belgium's youth minister, said he was "amazed that, due to the pressure of extremely conservative lobby groups within the U.S., the U.S. government has become an ally of all kinds of reactionary regimes."
Since taking office, President Bush has:
• reinstated the global gag rule;
• refused to spend the $34 million that Congress appropriated for the UNFPA for FY 2002;
• requested no funds for UNFPA in his budget for FY 2003;
• proposed a $21 million cut in the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) family planning and reproductive health program for FY 2003 and;
• used United Nations--sponsored global meetings to aggressively promote the president's domestic antiabortion, abstinence-only social agenda.
Despite the administration's ongoing protestations of support for international family planning and women's rights, its actions indicate that the administration is increasingly under the influence of the domestic anti-family planning lobby--distancing the United States from its traditional allies and from the worldwide consensus on reproductive and sexual health issues.
This issue also features several other analyses:
• "Mifepristone in the United States: Status and Future," by Heather Boonstra;
• "Family Planning Clinics and STD Services," by Cynthia Dailard;
• "States Key to Women's Family Planning Access Under New Medicaid Managed Care Rules," by Rachel Gold;
• "Twenty States Now Require Contraceptive Insurance Coverage," by Adam Sonfield; and
• "Michigan Breaks New Ground in Restricting Family Planning Funds," by Adam Sonfield and Elizabeth