Women's health groups urge foreign abortion funds from Bush

WASHINGTON -- Women's health organizations are calling on the Bush administration to reconsider its refusal to give money to foreign organizations that provide abortion services or counseling and to pay out more than $8 billion in promised funds for female health care to developing countries.

''The war on choice that this administration is waging has as its first victims the most vulnerable: the women and their families in developing nations who depend upon foreign aid and nongovernmental organizations for the reproductive health they need to survive," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at a news conference yesterday.

But Jose Fuentes, spokesman for the US Agency for International Development, said the Bush antiabortion policy is ''not going to change."

''The administration has heard many different sides of this argument, and the policy is the cornerstone of the president's initiative that abstinence is key," he said. ''In the eyes of this administration, that kind of [abortion rights] family planning doesn't work."

In 2001, President Bush revived the Reagan-era ''Mexico City policy" that said foreign nongovernmental organizations that provided abortion services or information about their availability would be ineligible for US money. In 2003, Bush extended the rule, which abortion rights advocates referred to as ''the global gag rule," to cover all agencies receiving State Department money.

A Mother's Promise the World Must Keep, a coalition of female health and population development advocacy groups, said yesterday they want President Bush to reverse his position and pay the outstanding $8 billion of $12 billion it pledged to female health care initiatives at the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said Bush's policy is designed to prevent abortions from being used as birth control. He said under the Clinton administration, taxpayer money was poured into organizations with ''a mission to legalize abortion."

But Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, said the Bush administration has frequently undermined the spirit of the Cairo agreement by faltering on commitments to women's health programs worldwide.

In 2002, the Bush administration withheld $34 million in funds promised to the United Nations Population Fund, arguing the money supported coercive abortions in China. Ipas, a women's reproductive rights agency, estimated shortfalls in US funding contributed to more than 300,000 pregnancy-related deaths and 48 million induced abortions.

Representative Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, said Congress cannot wait for Bush reconsider his position. Today, she plans to offer an amendment to a foreign aid bill to provide aid to the UN's Population Fund and other global health organizations without the administration's support.