Taft says the United States has a wide range of well-being programs for women, of which family planning and reproductive health are key elements. In 1999, there will be meetings to review the five-year results of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development [ICPD] held in Cairo. Taft was interviewed by Edmund F. Scherr.

Question: Please explain the Clinton administration's comprehensive approach to its population policy.

Taft: The comprehensive approach to population draws its strength from the ICPD Program of Action, which looked at family planning and reproductive health in a broader context of women's empowerment, girls' and boys' education, child health, and economic, environmental, and other social elements that affect the lives of girls and women.

Our programs and our policies really encompass a whole range of well-being for women and girls, of which family planning and reproductive health are some key elements. But we are looking at ways to protect women from sexual violence. We're looking at ways that women can have access to accurate health care information and family planning information and at ways to better involve men in their family lives. We're looking at women's access to micro-credit and economic opportunities as well as education.

This is happening not only in our domestic programs, but also in those programs that we support internationally.

Q: Can you explain the impact of Cairo? What made Cairo so special?

A: When you get 180 countries together -- and they actually agree on a plan of action -- it is phenomenal. At Cairo there was a very broad consensus that you couldn't just set forth one element of health care for women without putting it in a broad spectrum of their economic, social, and political rights.

So what we draw from this is that the way to stabilize world population growth is by opening up the next century to opportunities for all people, and to make sure that women have the ability to make informed decisions about themselves so that they can be more productive members of the world community.

Secretary of State Albright has a wonderful way of putting it -- since women are half of the world's population, you can't hold up the sky with only 50 percent of the population. You need women.

Q: What was the impact of the Cairo conference on the United States?

A: All of us learned how to associate and integrate several issues together -- population, environment, development, human rights, and so forth. Almost all of the elements that grew out of Cairo became part of the building blocks for the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference. So that was an important impact.

For the United States it catalyzed an interagency planning process. We now have an active President's Interagency Council on Women to implement the agreement out of the women's conference in Beijing. Within the State Department we have an international objective to try to stabilize world population growth as a key element of our foreign policy. We also have special initiatives on the rights of women internationally and the protection of women and girls from trafficking.

We've also seen some important legislative changes. Just after Cairo, Congress passed a law ensuring complete access to reproductive health care services by making it a crime to use force, or to interfere with providers of reproductive health services or their patients. And there was a recent decision to require federal employees' health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. These were both very important.

Various U.S. government agencies have a number of activities, all of which center around women's well-being, that started in Cairo and were augmented in Beijing. We're seeing them take root at the national level in the United States, certainly within the Clinton Administration.

I'd also like to say that this has been a very interesting case study on civil society. Since Cairo, non-governmental organizations, including family planning organizations, and health, development, child survival, environmental, human rights, and women's groups, have been brought into the process of looking in an integrated fashion at how to stabilize the world's population. We have a very strong partnership with these groups.

Q: Can the right to family planning be abused?

A: Some people who oppose family planning services oppose them because of the appearance in some places of coercive family planning practices, forced sterilizations, and forced abortions -- clearly things that violate basic human rights.

Nobody wants people to be forced to do something that is bad for themselves or their families. People who want to be sterilized or have an abortion should be fully informed of their other options. But if they do choose to have an abortion or sterilization, it should be safe.

There is a very strong and compelling case for giving people the opportunity to make their own informed decisions about their lives and the size and spacing of their families. This is a basic human right, because it helps people -- women, along with their husbands or partners -- to determine the course of their own lives.

We all oppose coercion, but that message doesn't always come out as it should.

Q: What about the opposition by some in Congress to U.S. support for family planning programs overseas?

A: I think that there is a perception by a minority of members of Congress that family planning promotes abortions.

People who equate family planning with abortion are simply wrong. Abortion is not approved or condoned as a method of family planning by anybody, and yet when we promote safe options for family planning, detractors always come back to abortion.

It's important for everyone to know that the U.S. government does not support abortion as a method of family planning. In our programs overseas we do not allow the funding of abortions as a method of family planning nor even the advocacy of changing laws to promote abortion or allow abortion overseas.

We do feel strongly, though, that organizations should be able -- with their own time and their own money -- to do what is legally permissible for them to do, whether it is providing safe abortion services or advocating within their own political system. This is why the Clinton administration opposes the so-called "Mexico City policy" that certain members of Congress are advocating.

We feel that it is inappropriate to restrict our ability to fund organizations wherever they live to do things that are legally appropriate for them to do.

Editor's Note: The "Mexico City policy" -- in effect by executive order under the Reagan and Bush administrations but overturned by President Clinton -- ended all U.S. family planning assistance to any foreign nongovernmental organization (NGO) that performed legal abortions or was involved in abortion-related activities, even if these activities were carried out with their own private funds. There are some in Congress who want to legislate a version of the "Mexico City policy."

A: Of course. We support several international organizations on these issues, particularly the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The fund is the world's largest multilateral provider of population assistance. Its programs complement the bilateral assistance provided by the United States and other donors. UNFPA provides much-needed and desired voluntary family planning services, maternal and child health care plus other services to over 160 countries. UNFPA is taking the lead role for the United Nations in the Cairo plus five review process.

We also support the activities of several additional agencies. UNICEF is a key player in child health and child survival. UNAIDS is a relatively new organization that is important in leading the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. WHO, UNDP, and the World Bank also have important programs in these areas. So we work very closely with all of these organizations.

Q: How are other countries responding to the Cairo Plan of Action?

A: I think it's mixed. A lot depends on a country's political, economic, and social situation. On the whole, we've seen a lot of success stories. Voices from all over the developing world, particularly women's voices, are seeking equal access to education, increased information about family planning, and improved quality of reproductive health care.

In Turkey, nongovernmental organizations have seized on the issue of girls' education in a very strong proactive way and have generated some policy changes there. I think we all want to make sure that girls can stay in school long enough so that they have a valuable impact on the political, economic, and social elements of their society, and are then given more respect and opportunities.

Nepal has done a very good job of trying to deal with the maternal mortality problem by coming up with more appropriate post-partum care technology and better ways of dealing with what has been a very significant problem.

What each country is going to do this year, as we lead up to a five-year assessment of Cairo, is to prepare its own report card on how far they've come and what constraints they still face. I think what will be very helpful is for all the countries to be quite open about what has succeeded, what hasn't succeeded, and see if we can't learn from each other.

Q: What about the specific global impacts of Cairo?

A: I can't really answer that yet because we don't have all the information yet. Remember, Cairo just was four years ago and the statistics are only about two years old.

However, I do believe that we can quantify a number of things. We are starting to see some reduction in maternal mortality. We are seeing some changes in legislation. We've seen a lot of momentum on the women and violence problem. There have been some international conferences on how to deal with the trafficking of women and girls. This is phenomenal. This wasn't even on the scope in terms of programmatic responses until fairly recently. So that's been good.

Q: What will happen at the Cairo plus five forum February 1999 in the Hague? Does the Cairo Program of Action need revision?

A: The United States does not support a revision or a reopening for negotiation of what was so well negotiated four years ago. In fact, the Program of Action is a 20-year plan. What we want to do is discuss what has happened during the past five years -- to review the successes we've had and the challenges we face.

It's also a reaffirmation that we really care about accountability. All participants want to make sure that the Program is on track toward achieving its goals. It's going to take a continued commitment to meet all the objectives of Cairo.

Two events will take place at the international forum. First, there will be an opportunity for NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to have a forum to share their experiences and their assessment of progress so far.

Then there will be a forum with representatives from all the countries that were at Cairo. They will make statements about the progress in their countries and the challenges they still have.

Later in the year, we will have a special session of the U.N. General Assembly to report officially on where we all stand five years after Cairo. And this won't be the end. We will continually have to evaluate where we are so that in 15 years we'll find that human rights and civil rights and proper health care have been extended to all the world. I think the momentum is there, and I can see it building even more with the events of next year.

Edmund F. Scherr writes on population topics and other global issues for the
United States Information Agency.