GUEST EDITORIAL: A Cruel Policy

It is clear that some in the Bush administration, unable to curb abortion rights in the United States, are taking their frustrations out on women around the world. It is a cruel policy that will only lead to more suffering, more deathÑand more abortionsÑin nations that already have more than their share.

At a United Nations meeting in Bangkok last week, State Department officials said the United States would no longer support the 1994 Cairo plan to improve reproductive health worldwide. This follows the administration's decision to cut off all $34 million in aid to the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), even though the contribution had been approved by Congress.

In each case, the administration said it will not support programs that have "reproductive health care" as a goal. While most people realize that "reproductive health care" means the care of women and their babies, our government is fixated on the fact that it also can, where the procedure is legal, mean access to abortion.

Abortion is legal in many countries, including the United States, where it remains a constitutionally protected right. The fact the Bush administration is working so hard to deny to women in other nations a service it has not yet been able to deny to American women is a kind of imperialism aimed at keeping women dependent, uneducated and in poverty.

Experts have long known that access to family planning services, from contraception to prenatal and obstetrical care, empowers women to choose when to have children. That means healthier women, healthier children, less poverty, more education and a better quality of life for all concerned.

The UNFPA estimates that the $34 million it lost when the Bush administration cut off its support would have been enough to prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies worldwide. And, statistically, preventing 2 million unwanted pregnancies means preventing 800,000 abortions.

That means that, if the true goal of the Bush administration is to reduce the number of abortions worldwide, it is doing exactly the wrong thing. The only question is whether administration officials are too stupid to see this or, far worse, they know the truth but are taking this action to score points with the anti-choice extremists in their own party.

Either way, there is no reasonable way this policy could be called pro-life.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune: http://www.sltrib.com/11052002/opinion/opinion.htm