More than 60 family planning and women’s groups issued a declaration on Monday accusing the U.S. administration of undermining efforts to cut world poverty by refusing funds for U.N. sexual health programs.
The groups called on European countries to step in and fill the cash gap left by the ban, championed by President George W. Bush as part of a campaign to promote abstinence from sex as the best way of limiting family size.
They made the appeal to a U.N.-sponsored European Population Forum in Geneva called to review developments since a global conference in Cairo in 1994 agreed on an action program to attack poverty by promoting women’s rights.
“There are clear links between sexual and reproductive health and rights and the overarching development goal of poverty elimination,” the groups’ declaration said.
The inability of a couple or an individual, deprived of information and access to means of contraception, to choose the number and spacing of their children “limits their social and economic options,” it asserted.
But this message was being undermined by a U.S. government, the world’s largest development donor, “hostile to the holistic approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights” enshrined in U.N. programs.
Bush, accused by critics of promoting the cause of Christian fundamentalists, has withheld about $35 million in funding to the U.N. Population Fund and the World Health Organization, which do not exclude abortion from their programs.
U.S. delegates, including representatives of Protestant anti-abortion groups and Catholics backing Vatican policies, have brought near-collapse to international gatherings on children’s rights, development and population by opposing any language that might allow for abortion or contraception.
The groups signing Monday’s appeal said that in the face of the U.S. stance “the need for global and steadfast European leadership on sexual and reproductive health rights has never been greater.”
Among organizations endorsing the document were the U.S. Catholics for a Free Choice, Family Care International and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. It was also backed by groups from Asia, Latin America and Europe.
