INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING POLICY
A New York Times editorial December 28 criticized the Bush administration’s effort at the Bangkok population conference to block an endorsement of condom use against AIDS. “It's not often that a vote is taken at a U.N. meeting, where consensus is usually the goal. But this time participants voted -- and the other nations united in striking down the American position.” The editorial continued, “By now, embarrassing behavior by the Bush administration at international meetings on women, health and the environment has become almost routine. The consequences, however, go beyond resentment and ridicule. Mr. Bush has concluded that family planning and sex education abroad -- including AIDS education -- can be sacrificed to please the far right without angering Americans who want to keep abortion legal here.” The Times concluded with a warning: “Teenage girls get AIDS largely because they are pressured into sex by older men. To deny them access to condoms and counseling about how to negotiate safe sex is a deadly strategy. Whatever the Bush administration believes about when life begins, it should not advocate measures that increase the possibility it will end in early adulthood.” Read: The New York Times, Salon.com, Women’s Enews’ “Outrage of the Week”, National Public Radio, Voice of America

NEWS ABOUT UNFPA
34 Million Friends Campaign
“At first the letters just trickled in to the United Nations Population Fund. A dollar here, five dollars there. It was enough to buy a few birthing kits or cure one 14-year-old mother of the silent plague of fistula,” wrote Ellen Goodman in her December 22 column in The Boston Globe about the 34 Million Friends Campaign. “Of course it didn't begin to make up for the $34 million that the Bush administration denied the international family planning group. But the trickle didn't stop either. It grew all fall until an astonished woman at the UNFPA decided to invest in an electronic letter opener.” Now, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Every day, 500 or 600 more letters arrive in the New York office from Americans bearing gifts to women overseas. Goodman noted, “The UNFPA's Mari Tikkanen, who stays after work with other volunteers to take the money out of the envelopes, stopping occasionally to read the letters to each other, says, ‘I've never seen anything like it.’” It took months for the campaign to reach its first $100,000. It took just weeks to add in another $50,000. If the goal of $34 million sounds elusive, UNFPA's Tikkanen says, ''When it hit $1,000, I was thrilled. Now I don't think anything is impossible.'' Goodman concluded, “One dollar per person. [Lois] Abraham calls it an ‘entry fee’ to have your voice heard. I call it a pretty low price for a new, improved foreign policy.” Read: The Boston Globe, Joan Ryan’s Dec. 29 column in The San Francisco Chronicle and The Albuquerque Journal (NM) Dec. 29 story (registration required). Goodman’s column ran in the Wausau Daily Herald (WI), Albany Times Union (NY), Augusta Chronicle (GA), Baltimore Sun (MD), Star Tribune (MN), Charlotte Observer (NC), and the Fort Pierce Tribune (FL).

U.S. POLICY ACTIVITIES
Energized by the midterm elections, the anti-abortion movement is counting on Republican control of the new Congress and backing from President Bush to enact key elements of its long-stalled agenda. The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) was the first to report this, noting December 29 that high on the list are bills to ban partial-birth abortions, make it a federal crime to circumvent state parental-consent laws, punish criminals who harm a fetus, and give health providers and insurers the legal right to refuse to perform, pay for or counsel patients for abortion services. Kate Michelman, President of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said the Democrats' loss of Senate control in the November election "significantly changed the political landscape" and "removed the only national government institution that provided a fire wall" protecting abortion rights. "We have never had an environment as hostile as this since Roe vs. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court 30 years ago," she said. "This could really result in more losses than we have experienced in the past." In addition to easing the way for restrictive legislation, Michelman said, the power shift will make it easier for Bush to appoint federal judges who oppose abortion. Read: The Star-Ledger

The Los Angeles Times reported December 19 that 14 Democratic members of Congress accused the Bush administration of playing politics with a new government fact sheet on condom use, eliminating key information that could help people make informed decisions. Led by Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the lawmakers said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention omitted instructions on how to properly use a condom, and studies showing that condom education does not promote earlier sexual activity among young people. Those topics were covered in the last condom fact sheet, created in 1996 during the Democratic Clinton administration. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, the members of Congress wrote: "The apparent purpose of these alterations and deletions is to remove information that conflicts with the administration's preference for 'abstinence-only' programs." The Times noted that one HHS official said the fact sheets were designed to present the most current scientific information available and to present both sides of the debate. He added, however, that "how it's viewed is in the eyes of the beholder."

Editorial Cartoons
See editorial cartoons by Ann Telnaes of Women’s Enews: Dec. 12, Dec. 18, Dec. 31 and David Horsey of Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA): Dec. 22.

WELFARE OF CHILDREN
The United Nations has denounced by name for the first time governments and guerrilla groups that have recruited children to fight their wars. The New York Times reported that Among 23 governments or groups identified in a report released this week were factions in Afghanistan linked to the Northern Alliance, which was backed by the United States, as well as remnants of the ousted Taliban that are trying to regroup. The report also mentioned the government and nine contending factions in Congo; the government and one faction in Liberia; and the government and several factions in Somalia. The report warned that some youths who had been demobilized from fighting in Congo were at risk of being dragooned into warfare again. The list "signals the parties in conflict that the international community is watching and will hold you responsible for what you do to children," said Olara Otunnu, the United Nations special representative for children and armed conflict. Mr. Otunnu pointed to a worsening crisis in northern Uganda, where a rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army, is waging its insurgency with child soldiers and also using them as "sexual slaves." Read: New York Times

EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS
“A combination of famine and AIDS is threatening the backbone of Africa—the women who keep African societies going and whose work makes up the economic foundation of rural communities,” wrote UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a December 29 op ed. “For decades, we have known that the best way for Africa to thrive is to ensure that its women have the freedom, power and knowledge to make decisions affecting their own lives and those of their families and communities,” He noted that studies prove “there is no effective development strategy in which women do not play a central role. When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immediately: families are healthier; they are better fed; their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And what is true of families is true of communities and, eventually, of whole countries.” Annan concluded, “Education and prevention are still the most powerful weapons against the spread of H.I.V. If we want to save Africa from two catastrophes, we would do well to focus on saving Africa's women.” Read: The New York Times

The New York Times’ December 16 editorial gave a ringing call for U.S. action on AIDS. “Earlier this month Colin Powell and Tommy Thompson gathered representatives from 86 countries to lecture them on the importance of political leadership in fighting AIDS. Make AIDS a global priority, said Secretary of State Powell. Invest in global health, implored Health Secretary Thompson. Their message was important and well timed—but should have been directed at Washington.” The editorial continued: “The president and his top officials speak about AIDS in the most apocalyptic terms, and Mr. Powell called the disease a more important challenge than terrorism. But when it comes to financing, urgency vanishes. Mr. Bush is likely to visit Africa next month. He should be carrying with him an AIDS initiative backed with real money.” The editorial said “American officials should not be giving anyone lectures while Washington's response to the major catastrophe of our time remains limited largely to words.” However, according to a December 23 story by The Financial Times, Mr. Bush postponed his visit to Africa after the UK issued a warning that South Africa might be the target of terror attacks over Christmas. Read: The New York Times and Financial Times The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a letter from Paula Gianino, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood St. Louis, on December 28: “

The recent U.N. conference in Bangkok was held for Asian and Pacific nations to advance the health of their citizens. However, the Bush administration tried to derail the conference and impose its own agenda to eliminate sex education, push morality rather than science and overturn laws that protect individual freedoms,” She noted that the administration’s “assault on reproductive health continues here at home—this time with a new mandated campaign of misinformation”—the revised fact sheets from the Centers for Disease Control that cast doubt on the effectiveness of condoms against sexually transmitted diseases. “As we approach the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must defend freedom for women in the United States and abroad, and fight those who would play politics with our health,” Gianino wrote. Read: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) and a December 22 op ed in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA) by Jacqueline Sherris, Director of the Reproductive Health Strategic Program and Christopher Elias, President of PATH.

A December 27 editorial by The Philadelphia Daily News asked, “If you want to know how convoluted Republicans have become, look at the party's new leader in the Senate, Bill Frist—a Tennessee doctor, being hammered by hard right conservatives for being soft on abortion.” The Daily News noted that during his 1994 election race against incumbent Jim Sasser, Frist said the government shouldn't prohibit abortions, and has since supported stem-cell research. But although the health-care company his family owns performs abortions, “Frist's voting record on abortion is enough to make pro-choice advocates scream—He's voted against family planning programs and giving soldiers overseas access to abortions and voted for a ban on partial-birth abortions.” The editorial concluded: “Poll after poll has shown that the majority of Americans believe abortion should remain legal. Yet the party's official stance is anti-choice, and it continues to court the votes of fundamentalist Christians who view abortion as murder. Even Karl Rove can't bridge that divide. Something has to give.” Read: The Philadelphia Daily News

“The common perception outside Afghanistan is that when the U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban, women and girls were liberated. The truth is somewhat different,” according to a December 17 op ed by Zama Coursen-Neff of Human Rights Watch, published in The Washington Post. Despite improvements in access to education and an end to the Taliban's ban on working outside the home, an array of Taliban-era restrictions on women remains in place. The op ed noted that one of the worst places is the western province of Herat, ruled by local warlord Ismail Khan. For Herati women and girls, every decision, every day presents dangers or challenges from the government: where they can go, how they can get there, whom they can go with and how they can dress. Coursen-Neff concluded, “The outside world must lend material and moral support to Afghanistan's women so they can stand up to the male-dominated warlord culture all around them. So long as women continue to see prison as a better alternative to their lives in Afghanistan, the rest of the world should know it has failed.” Read: The Washington Post and news coverage by National Public Radio’s Morning Edition on Dec. 17

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The above summary was written by Elena Cabatu and Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005, 202/326-8700. Redistribution is encouraged with credit to CCMC.