"In London this past week, we saw valuable reaffirmation of the conclusions agreed to ten years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Yet my government is now one of the major barriers to progress. From day one, President George W. Bush has shown contempt for the lives and health of women. In 2001, he re-imposed the Global Gag Rule, prohibiting hundreds of foreign NGOs from providing legal abortion services, from lobbying their governments for abortion law reform, and even from providing abortion referrals. At international conferences, the U.S. has consistently voiced opposition to making abortion safe and accessible where it’s legal, and educating young people on how to protect themselves against HIV and unwanted pregnancies. It is indeed demoralizing to measure the world's progress in the midst of my own government's failure to support and implement the goals of Cairo.

Despite that disappointment, there are some positive signals abroad. One of Cairo's most important legacies was that it connected one of the most optimistic legal developments of the 20th Century – international human rights law – to reproductive and sexual health. By recognizing that the existing body of international human rights law encompasses women's experiences in their reproductive and sexual lives, governments provided activists with a crucial jumping off point.

As we, at the Center, reflect back on progress elsewhere, we see the adoption of legislation and policies that further women's reproductive health and rights. These governments have shown an understanding that the law needs to work for women – discrimination against them in reproductive health services, in the education sphere, in the economic and political spheres and, most importantly, in the previously sacrosanct family sphere must end. But justice is about more than words in the law books. Women need to know about their rights and to seek redress when the government officials – whether legislators, judges or local leaders – do not properly ensure them.

Despite the U.S.'s obstructionist policies, the past ten years demonstrate that women's rights and health advocates are succeeding. One indication of that success can be observed in abortion law. Twelve countries have now gone beyond the recommendations of ICPD to significantly liberalize their abortion laws.

That said, as the co-convener of the working group on abortion at Countdown 2015, we stand firm in our conviction that ICPD did not go far enough in calling for universal access to safe legal abortion. But we are heartened that, even in difficult political settings, women's advocates have changed antiquated abortion laws that recognize unintended pregnancies cannot be totally eliminated and that women, not their governments, should choose whether to carry their pregnancies to term or to terminate them safely. We will continue to work for the day when all governments around the world respect, protect and fulfill women's reproductive rights."

Nancy Northup
President, Center for Reproductive Rights

Read the Declaration of the Global Roundtable

For more information on progress towards reaching the goals of ICPD at the five-year review, see ICPD +5: Gains for Women Despite Opposition (PDF) and Cairo +5: Assessing U.S. Support for Reproductive Health at Home and Abroad (PDF).