MARCH FOR WOMEN'S LIVES
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Sunday, April 25, the March for Women's Lives took place here in Washington. Its organizers estimated that more than a million men, women, and children from more than 57 countries gathered under the banner of reproductive rights, health, and justice for all women. Participants called on Congress and the administration not only to protect the right to choose but also to protect and promote family planning, maternal and child health care, and the empowerment of women in the United States and abroad.
An op-ed by Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, appeared that same day in the Chicago Sun-Times. The piece was entitled "March is About More than Abortion," and it explained that the marchers' concerns went beyond the issue of abortion to include concerns about HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning, the President's imposition of a global gag rule on family planning providers, and the administration's refusal to release funds to the United Nations Population Fund to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies that can lead to abortion.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Fornos' article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 25, 2004]
MARCH IS ABOUT MORE THAN ABORTION
(By Werner Fornos)
Passing a barbershop window in Juneau, Alaska, the other day, I spotted a placard inviting locals to join a rally in Washington, D.C., today that could have significant implications for the November presidential and congressional elections.
If people from as far away as our country's northwestern-most state converge upon the nation's capital in sufficient numbers-say, a quarter of a million and upwards-it might be time for President Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove, to unbutton their collars and reach for the hyperventilation bags. The performance of the Bush administration on women's rights may be judged more by the turnout for this event than by any poll or survey.
The purpose of the March for Women's Lives is to deliver to our national leaders a strong, unequivocal message of support for reproductive health and rights and justice for all women.
There are concerns well beyond those of hard-core feminists that Bush administration policies are unduly influenced by right-wing religious zealots and the Vatican, who oppose modern contraceptives as well as abortion.
Much of this rising tide of reaction emanates from pro-choice advocates infuriated by the refusal of the White House and a Republican majority in Congress to acknowledge federal law pronouncing abortion as a matter between a woman, her conscience and her physician. But the march is about more than the termination of pregnancies.
For example, a fact sheet about condoms was removed from the National Institutes of Health Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site and replaced with a document emphasizing condom failure and the effectiveness of abstinence.
No one is suggesting that condom failure should be ignored, or that there is anything wrong with promoting abstinence. The fact remains, however, that the condom, in addition to being a method of preventing unintended pregnancy, is the most effective defense against HIV/AIDS for sexually active individuals.
In a world where 10 more people are infected with HIV every minute, where half of the 40 million people already infected are women, where HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among African-American women ages 25 to 34 and the seventh leading cause of death for white American women that age, it is patently inexcusable to omit the condom option from what should be the nation's most trusted source of medical information.
To explain the removal of the condom fact sheet, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy offered the flimsy excuse that the CDC "routinely takes information off its Web site and replaces it with more up-to-date information." Updating the Web site is understandable, expunging the role of the condom in preventing HIV is simply indefensible.
If the Bush administration routinely ignores the reproductive rights and health of women in the United States, it is hardly surprising that respected international family planning nongovernmental organizations give the White House and U.S. congressional leadership low marks on their concern for poor women around the world.
Within an hour or two after taking the oath of office, President Bush signed the global gag rule, a policy to deny U.S. funds to overseas family planning organizations that provide, perform or counsel women on abortion. In the United States, this would be a flagrant violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. But the Bush administration, while robustly promoting democratization worldwide, does not hesitate to penalize the world's poorest women by withholding this right from family planning providers overseas.
Then, too, the White House remains adamant in its refusal to release a $34 million appropriation by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund, the largest multilateral provider of family planning and reproductive health services to women in more than 140 developing countries.
Ironically, the combined impact of the Bush administration's global gag rule and its refusal to release the congressional appropriation for the U.N. agency has led to thousands of abortions resulting from pregnancies to poor women worldwide who have been denied access to family planning information, education and supplies.
There is ample evidence that the availability of condoms and other medically approved family planning methods already has prevented substantially more abortions than the Bush administration's policies have, can, or could. The women who will march in Washington today understand the calculus of reproductive health and family planning denial, even if many of our national leaders do not.
Werner Fornos is president of the Population Institute and the 2003 United Nations Population laureate.