Bush Administration Undermining Reproductive Rights at UN

The Bush Administration is working to undermine recognition of reproductive rights in international agreements brokered at the United Nations, particularly adolescents' rights. On April 1, U.S. Ambassador Sichan Siv stated at a meeting of the UN Commission on Population and Development, "the United States does not accept the use of the term 'reproductive health services' because the term can be interpreted to include promoting the legalization or expansion of legal abortion services."

He added, "Abstinence and postponement of initial sexual activity play important roles in the promotion of adolescent health and well-being ... Age-appropriate messages encouraging abstinence for young people are key to HIV/AIDS and pregnancy prevention programs for youth around the world."

These statements are in stark contrast to conclusions made in a UN Secretary General's report to the UN Commission on Population and Development. The report states, "For many adolescents, sexual initiation occurs before they receive adequate information on potential health risks, the skills of self-protection and full access to reproductive health services."

Photo By: United Nations

Ambassador Siv's statement foreshadows the ideological line the Bush Administration intends to draw, and has drawn, in negotiations on adolescents' reproductive rights at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children (Children's Summit) to be held in New York from May 8 to 10. By opposing language reaffirming reproductive health and rights in the agreement drafted at the Children's Summit, the Bush Administration can build on its efforts to undermine reproductive rights advocacy abroad, in a fashion similar to the "global gag rule's" effect on abortion reform. The "gag rule" forbids foreign non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. family planning funds from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services, lobby their own governments for abortion law reform, or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion.

Last June, during negotiations on the Children's Summit agreement, U.S. negotiators opposed language affirming that women and adolescent girls have the right "to full access to affordable, quality reproductive health care, as agreed at the International Conference on Population and Development [held in Cairo in 1994] and the Fourth World Conference on Women [held in Beijing in 1995], and reaffirmed at their five-year reviews."

Who shares the Bush Administration's view? For starters, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, Syria and the Vatican are all in the camp opposing any efforts to protect adolescents' reproductive health and rights. Excluding the Vatican, the U.S. State Department has consistently identified these nations as having oppressed their citizens' human rights.

The U.S. position is unlikely to change as the Bush Administration's delegation for the Children's Summit is composed of a cast of characters staunchly opposed to reproductive rights. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, known domestically for his support of unconstitutional bans on so-called "partial-birth abortion" and abstinence-only education, is slated to lead the U.S. delegation. Others delegates may include John Klink, the former Holy See ambassador to the UN and Bill Saunders, Human Rights Counsel at the anti-choice group the Family Research Council.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has been working hard to shed light on the tactics of the Bush Administration. In the run-up to the Children's Summit, Center for Reproductive Rights legal advisors and legal fellows have been lobbying delegates throughout the negotiation sessions. In addition, the Center for Reproductive Rights has sought to influence the U.S. position by sending letters, signed by 51 non-governmental organizations, to Secretary Thompson and Secretary of State Colin Powell to point out the dangers of undermining adolescent's reproductive rights at the conference. The Center for Reproductive Rights and other reproductive rights groups briefed members of Congress about the Bush Administration's anti-reproductive rights agenda at the Children's Summit.

Why does all this matter? At stake is the worldwide consensus on reproductive rights shaped during the past decade at international conferences in Cairo and Beijing. If UN member states agree at the Children's Summit to a document that includes language restricting reproductive rights, then the progress made so far in expanding and protecting reproductive rights will be significantly undermined.                             Photo By: United Nations

Reproductive rights advocates fear the Children's Summit could end with an agreement that restricts adolescents' access to information on contraception and protection from HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmissible infections. These advocates also believe that language being proposed, particularly on parent's control of the reproductive rights of adolescents, could reopen the door to arguments of cultural relativity and could be construed to condone practices such female genital mutilation (FGM),a practice that has been criminalized in the United States.

During the Children's Summit, Center for Reproductive Rights legal advisors and fellows will follow the negotiations and will propose progressive reproductive rights language to delegates. In addition, the Center for Reproductive Rights will launch a report, "State of Denial: Adolescent Reproductive Rights in Zimbabwe," on May 8. The report illustrates how a government's denial of adolescents' access to contraceptive information and services can leave adolescent boys and girls dangerously unprepared to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortion, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmissible infections.

Jane Bovard of Red River Women's Clinic, Photo By: Dane Koeck

In The States

Center for Reproductive Rights Client Speaks on Defeating Abortion-Breast Cancer Scare Tactic

On March 28, the Center for Reproductive Rights defeated one of the latest anti-choice campaigns, known as the abortion-breast cancer scare tactic. The case marked the first time anti-choice activists sued a clinic to advance their unsubstantiated claims that having an abortion increases a woman's risk of breast cancer. Based on the medical evidence, they lost.

In December 1999, an anti-choice protestor sued the Red River Women's Clinic for false advertising after the clinic began distributing pamphlets to inform patients that there is no link between having an abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. Jane Bovard, Red River's director, produced the pamphlets in response to efforts by anti-choice activists to scare women into thinking they were putting themselves at a greater risk of developing breast cancer if they had an abortion. Bovard talked to the Reproductive Freedom News about the importance of winning the case against her clinic.

RFN: What has been the response in the community to you winning the case?

BOVARD: Obviously, the pro-choice community's response has been very positive, as has the response from family and friends. So far there has been little response in terms of the public media, such as letters to the editor from the anti-choice faction, which is also good news! In some ways, it appears that this "so-called" link between abortion and breast cancer has become a non-issue in this community, which is how it should be!

RFN: How did it feel to win the case?

BOVARD: I was relieved and felt vindicated. From day one, we had relied on very reputable sources - the National Abortion Federation and several well-known organizations like the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the World Health Organization -- for our information. They all state that women who undergo an abortion are at the same relative risk of getting breast cancer as women who have never been pregnant, and that is what we have been saying.

RFN: What message do you hope is sent to anti-choice activists as a result of your case?

BOVARD: I hope anti-choice activists get the message that they are going to have to pay the costs -- as they have been ordered to do in this case -- for clinics to defend against this type of lawsuit that relies on pseudo-science and scare tactics to harass clinics and women seeking abortions. I also hope they get the message that they can't win these cases.

Center for Reproductive Rights Fights TRAPs Laid Against Women

Anti-choice activists would have people believe that doorway widths and ventilation exchange rates are important factors affecting women's health today. Under the guise of protecting women's health, anti-choice lawmakers are imposing medically unnecessary regulations solely on abortion providers, which are intended to put them out of business.

Although abortion doctors already meet all federal and state licensing requirements, 17 states and Puerto Rico have created new regulations that would make it more difficult for women to choose abortion. In some cases, these regulations would allow state health officials to raid doctors' offices and clinics to open up patient records to public scrutiny, without their consent.

Sound like questionable methods pawned off as a way to protect women's health? The Center for Reproductive Rights thinks so and this is why we have been fighting these regulations, known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) laws, ever since the anti-women's rights contingent devised the tactic. Far from protecting women's health, TRAP laws only serve the purpose of harassing abortion providers and undermining women's right to reproductive choice by trying to make abortion prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain.

In April, the Center for Reproductive Rights was in court twice to fight TRAP laws enacted in South Carolina and Arizona. Arizona's TRAP law would subject all doctors' offices and clinics where five or more first-trimester abortions are performed per month, or any second or third-trimester abortions, to unannounced and warrantless inspections of their facilities and patient's records. The providers would risk civil and criminal penalties for not complying with the arbitrary rules. Private physicians, who fit the criteria, would be subject to mandatory standards on virtually all areas of the doctor's practice, including burdensome administrative, operating and personnel requirements that serve no medical purpose.

"The regulation does not promote women's health; instead it discriminates against women and abortion providers, and would permit the government access to patients' personal medical files without their consent," said Bonnie Scott Jones, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, who with Staff Attorney Brigitte Amiri represent the clients in Tucson Women's Clinic v. Eden.

These challenged rules apply to no other doctors performing outpatient procedures. For years, the state legislature explicitly denied the Department of Health Services the authority to license, supervise, regulate or control any private office or clinic of a licensed health provider unless the patients are kept overnight or treated with general anesthesia. Arizona's law was passed in 1999 and has been blocked by a preliminary injunction since March 2000.

On April 5, Center for Reproductive Rights attorneys asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to find a 1996 South Carolina TRAP law unconstitutional because it would permit the state to obtain medical records of any patient without seeking their consent.

First challenged in 1996, the law took effect for the first time in September 2001. In September 2001, a federal judge found the South Carolina law violated informational privacy rights, but the state attorney general appealed that claim to the Fourth Circuit. The Center for Reproductive Rights has asked the appeals court to consider its claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague, violates the establishment clause of the Constitution, and improperly delegates licensing authority.

In addition to these cases, the Center for Reproductive Rights is currently challenging a TRAP law in Tennessee.

Worldwide

Zimbabwean Laws And Policies Put Adolescents' Lives At Risk

"Freezit" wrap. It is what some Zimbabwean boys and girls have turned to in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmissible infections (STIs).

This is one example of the harsh reality the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Zimbabwe-based Child and Law Foundation (CLF) uncovered during a human rights fact-finding mission assessing Zimbabwean adolescents' access to services and information on contraception and STI prevention.

"Through contradictory laws and policies, the Zimbabwean government is denying adolescents their human right to access the services and information to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and STIs," said Julia Zajkowski, a Center for Reproductive Rights consulting legal advisor for Global Projects and co-author of the Center for Reproductive Rights' and CLF's report, "State of Denial: Adolescent Reproductive Rights in Zimbabwe." "As a result, adolescents' rights are being violated and they are vulnerable to dangerous, potentially life- threatening health risks."

The Center for Reproductive Rights' report is based on interviews conducted with more than 800 Zimbabwean adolescents, parents, family members, government officials and service providers.

Zimbabwean adolescents, who comprise more than one-third of the country's population, face a terrifying reality. The early onset of sexual activity has resulted in exceedingly high rates of early and unwanted pregnancy. Close to 40% of female adolescents in Zimbabwe are already mothers by the time they are 19 years old. Tragically, the maternal mortality rate for Zimbabwe is an alarming 610 deaths per 100,000 live births, in part attributed to unsafe, illegal abortion.

Of the adolescents interviewed for the report, more than 85% had had sexual relations by age 16, with many female adolescents having had sexual intercourse at an even earlier age. Contrast that with the report's findings that only 14% of female adolescents interviewed had ever used any method of contraception or STI prevention. Most youths do not seek out reproductive health services until they have become pregnant or have contracted a STI.

On the Hill

Study Finds No Proof of Effectiveness of Abstinence-only Education

There is no proof available that abstinence-only education programs have decreased sexual activity, unwanted pregnancies or the spread of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) among American teens, according to the preliminary findings of a study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The report states that,"the percentage of teens reporting that they have had sex has decreased, continuing a decline that started in 1991. At this time, however, no definitive research has linked the abstinence education legislation with these downward trends."

The report's findings were released as the Bush Administration is asking Congress for a $33 million increase in annual federal funding for abstinence-only programs and a House committee voted to renew spending for these programs. Federally-funded abstinence-only education programs forbid any discussion of family planning or promotion of methods of safe sex. The report also comes as the Bush Administration is working to gain international support for abstinence-only education, rather than comprehensive sex education, at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children (Children's Summit) to be held in New York from May 8-10.

"The Bush administration's support of abstinence-only education will harm teenagers by denying them critical, potentially life-saving information about contraception, safer sex practices and sexuality," says Jody Ratner, a Center for Reproductive Rights fellowship attorney, who focuses on minors' rights.

The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., was ordered by Congress to evaluate the effectiveness of federally-funded abstinence-only education program. The study began in 1998 and focuses on 11 different abstinence-only education programs funded by the federal government. The preliminary report explains the framework of the study. The final report will be completed in 2005.

House Bill Makes Federal Crime to Help Teens Cross State Lines for Abortion

On April 17, by a margin of 99, the House of Representatives approved anti-abortion legislation that would make it a federal crime for anyone but a parent to assist a young woman in obtaining an abortion by crossing state lines without meeting her home state's parental involvement laws. Under the "Child Custody Protection Act, sisters, brothers, grandparents and friends of a teen who seeks an abortion in a state that is not her home state may be subjected to federal charges if they accompany the young woman to the physician. The bill now moves to the Senate. | |