Feminist International Radio Endeavour- FIRE/ June 2004

Meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America
Comisión Económica para América Latina / CEPAL
San Juan, June 28-30, 2004 

Cairo + 10

Press Conference 

International Working Group on Sexuality & Social Policy 
8 June 2004  San Juan, Puerto Rico

Remarks by Prof. Rosalind Petchesky, City University of New York

This policy began right here in Puerto Rico, where 35 percent of all adult women had been sterilized by 1968, thanks in large part to US support.  Later, under the rubric of population control, it spread to other countries in the hemisphere, such as Colombia and Brazil, and to Asia.  So the US government pioneered global programs both to restrict and to compel women’s childbearing in the 20^th century.

But two things are different today under the current Bush administration.  First, we have an unprecedented effort—in fact a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian mission—to impose a policy of sexual and reproductive conservatism on the entire globe, wherever US funds and interests penetrate.  Second, this initiative is not only a political gesture to Bush’s evangelical Christian base but is part and parcel of a unilateralist, “my way or the highway” approach to foreign policy. 

The “Bush Kamasutra” uses the same methods the administration applies in carrying out its economic and military policies abroad—in the “war on terrorism” and in United Nations and WTO meetings.  They are the methods of bribing, bullying and blackmailing—using the overwhelming weight of US economic and military power to pressure smaller, weaker countries to comply with the current right-wing agenda or risk losing precious funding or military protection—or, worst case, getting attacked. 

In the UN Security Council last week, the US backed down on its resolution that would have exempted our troops from international legal prosecution for sex crimes and torture like those committed at Abu Ghraib.  Knowing it was about to lose this vote or face a long debate raising the scandal of its prison atrocities, the administration will continue to bargain and bully behind the scenes with individual countries to ban any future prosecutions of American troops or officials; it has already negotiated such bilateral agreements with 90 countries.  I call it the “ABC approach”:  Ask, then Bribe, then Coerce, where C generally wins out over A.

I want to look at the current terms and consequences of such policies in just two areas:  abortion and HIV/AIDS.  In both areas the US in the past three years of the Bush government, since well before 9/11, has been systematically exporting and imposing its views on others in classic imperial fashion—in one case to stop behavior it considers “immoral” and in the other to promote behavior it considers “moral.” 

Bush’s first act as president, in January 2001, was the now infamous Global Gag Rule, which denies health organizations in countries that receive US family planning monies the right to use their own, non-US funds to perform abortions (even where legal), provide abortion counseling or referrals, or advocate to change abortion laws.  Such a rule would be unconstitutional in the United States, since it interferes with provider-patient communication and free speech. You have already heard about its dire consequences in Mexico and Brazil, how this rule not only abets deadly back-street abortions but also impedes delivery of other vital health services. 

Taking a more global view, the picture is just as grim: 

· over half a million women die each year from pregnancy-related causes;

· anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of these are from unsafe abortions;

· 99 percent of all these deaths are in developing countries that rely heavily on US foreign assistance and would be avoidable with the standard or emergency obstetric services available to most women in wealthy countries and classes.

In its campaign to prevent foreign and international agencies from providing abortions or even making them safe for poor women, the Bush administration has not only withheld all financing to the United Nations Population Fund.  Now it threatens to withhold funding as well from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund—not only if they “promote” abortion but also if they continue to cooperate with UNFPA!  This is outright blackmail as well as an attempt to undermine international organizations and to dictate their policies.  Worse, the conservative policy is a killer; it must be held responsible for countless, needless deaths of women.

In the area of HIV/AIDS, the Bush administration rightly gets credit for pledging a five-year, $15 billion grant for treatment and prevention, targeting especially the worst hit region of Southern Africa. This is certainly a welcome improvement over the policy of neglect by previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat.  But let’s look at the concrete realities of Bush’s Emergency Program to Fund AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), apart from the fact that only $350 million have actually been handed out thus far. 

First, despite the president’s belated if well-timed mention of the “C word” in Philadelphia last week (the first time he has acknowledged condoms as an effective method to prevent infection), there is little question that the overwhelming emphasis of his program is on “A” and “B”—programs that promote abstinence and “being faithful.”  This is the clear perception of health services and organizations around the world that are currently receiving or applying for funds, including in Southern Africa; such programs assume they must stress abstinence above all to qualify for funding.  A, not C.

The religious right is on a collision course with social reality in most of the Americas.  It wants to counsel premarital abstinence when age at marriage is increasing almost everywhere.  It wants to condemn every kind of sexuality except the conjugal heterosexual kind, when popular acceptance of diverse sexualities and family forms is manifestly on the rise.

Second, as with social and health programs in the United States, the money moves with increasing zest in the direction of so-called faith-based organizations, which often have little experience in health care. This means it moves away from many respected secular agencies like the Marie Stopes Society in Africa, with a long track record of providing highly skilled, comprehensive reproductive and sexual health services—including HIV prevention.  Or from sex worker groups, which the Bush administration considers immoral, in its policy of lumping together all commercial sex work with illegal sex trafficking.  Sex workers get stigmatized, even though they and their networks have been exceptionally creative in developing HIV-prevention strategies that work. 

It also means that conservative religious agendas are replacing those of public health, choice and gender equality that have been the hallmark of women’s health movements in Latin America and Africa.  In South Africa, for example, public health researchers report that the groups receiving funds under PEPFAR are mainly self-identified “Christian organizations.”  They are enrolling dozens of new patients a month on antiretroviral therapy, which is good, when only 2 percent of those who need ART worldwide are now receiving it. 

But at the same time they are not only teaching abstinence and monogamy but also attempting to restore men to “their rightful place in the family and society” and to reverse the empowerment of women and sexual minorities.  In this way, the Bush administration’s HIV/AIDS policy gives permission and resources to religious groups that wish to erase the last two decades of progress toward gender and sexual equality.  It also repeats the historical legacy of missionary and charity organizations that dominated health and social welfare provision under colonialism. 

Finally, the Bush HIV/AIDS program must be seen as a conscious effort to upstage multilateral efforts through the World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.  This brings me back to my initial point about the diplomacy of “my way or the highway.”  I find this approach to the world dangerous and frightening not only because it jeopardizes the health, well-being and empowerment of countless women, men and children in countries across the globe.  The refusal to listen to others—to pay attention to how they define their own aspirations and needs—has also brought the United States to the most extreme point of isolation and disrespect in its history. 

Fortunately for sexual and reproductive health and rights, other countries are refusing to go along with the bullying tactics of the Bush administration and its strange cohort of fundamentalist allies (some of the same regimes, ironically, that the US opposes as “evil” and bastions of terrorism).  In a series of UN-sponsored regional meetings in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the past two years, the US was entirely isolated in its attempt to repudiate the 1994 Cairo Programme of Action, while other countries overwhelmingly reaffirmed their commitment to that program, including its emphasis on sexual and reproductive rights.  I am confident the same thing will happen here at the ECLAC meeting in Puerto Rico.  But it is shameful that US “leadership” is aimed at sexual repression, moral purity and war instead of human health, pleasures and peace.