Posted on 04/21/2004 9:14:31 PM PDT by Jean S
Some conservatives on and off the Hill are angry that the Department of Health and Human Services has teamed up with critics of the Bush administration to hold a conference on global health and reproductive rights that will likely promote policies contrary to the president’s.
The conference, sponsored by the Global Health Council, will gather health experts and advocates from around the world, including International Planned Parenthood Federation, the United Nations International Family Planning Fund and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, each of which has opposed the administration’s positions on abortion or reproductive health, some conservatives charge. In particular, the groups have balked at the president’s endorsement of abstinence over the use of condoms.
The conference will also feature activists from MoveOn.org, a group that has spent millions of dollars on television ads attacking the president.
To the chagrin of these conservatives, the conference is being paid for in large part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The CDC and HRSA are both divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The conference will be held from June 1 to June 4 at the Omni Shoreham hotel.
The CDC, the HRSA and USAID are listed as “platinum” financial supporters of the conference, according to a recent brochure issued by the Global Health Council.
The fourth platinum-level sponsor is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has strongly opposed President Bush’s policy on abstinence.
Featured speakers at the conference include Doortje Braeken, senior adviser for adolescents and youth at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Dr. Thorya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“They are liberal family-planning groups,” said an aide to a prominent conservative in the House who works closely with socially conservative groups. “The two that we would be particularly concerned about are the International Planned Parenthood Federation and UNFPA, both of which have been denied U.S. assistance for family-planning funds.”
Those organizations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Family Health International, a “gold” sponsor of the conference, and the Alan Guttmacher Institute have drawn fire from conservatives for opposing Bush on sexual health issues.
“All of them are opposed to the principles announced by this administration when it comes to HIV prevention. They are the same organizations that opposed groups like ours on the Africa AIDS bill,” said Michael Schwartz, the vice president of government relations at Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group that promotes family values and the sanctity of life.
Lynnette Johnson Williams, the director of media relations for the Global Health Council, said that conservatives were presenting a selective review of the conference’s participants.
“[It] does not mention the balance in every session of our conference,” said Johnson Williams. “We have more than 2,000 conference participants from all over the world.”
She noted that the Catholic Medical Mission is one of the exhibitors.
But the five brochure-featured speakers of the conference, which includes one from Planned Parenthood, do not include a speaker from a conservative-advocacy,
sanctity-of-life-oriented group. And Johnson Williams could not name a conservative advocate in the special-session presentation scheduled June 4, which includes Obaid of UNFPA.
The American chapter of the Planned Parenthood Federation is co-sponsoring the March for Women’s Lives in Washington this weekend along with liberal groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women.
On June 1, the conference has scheduled a five-hour meeting to address the issue of unsafe abortions. Conservatives say that unsafe abortions are frequently a euphemism for illegal abortions and are often invoked in the context of arguments for legalized abortions, which abortion-rights proponents argue reduce female mortality rates.
Later that day is a two-hour reception showcasing the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s latest research. Anti-abortion conservatives charge that the institute is the research arm of pro-abortion-rights advocacy groups.
On the morning of June 4, the conference will present a two-and-a-half-hour presentation on effective grassroots advocacy, showcasing “the people behind ‘34 Million Friends of UNFPA,’ MoveOn.org, [and] Bowling for Columbine.”
The conference will also include a day of lobbying Capitol Hill, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on June 1. That day will include two hours of meetings with members of Congress and their staff.
The conservative GOP aide said 34 Million Friends of UNFPA is of particular concern.
“This 34 Million Friends of UNFPA is clearly an advocacy fundraising type organization and it looks like the conference is going to be used to lobby [Congress] as well,” said the aide.
“Use of taxpayer funds to lobby the government on policies is illegal,” added the aide, referring to the financial support of USAID and the Health and Human Services Department.
Kay Garvey, a spokeswoman for HRSA, said that her agency was not a sponsor of the conference “at this time.”
However, Johnson Williams, spokeswoman for Global Health Council, said it was. she added that the council has negotiated with government agencies since the fall about sponsoring the conference.
USAID spokeswoman Portia Palmer said the agency “remains concerned that the initial program for the conference was tilted too far toward critics of the administration. We’ve instructed the Global Health Council to provide balance to the program. In particular, we asked that they bring in well-known abstinence advocates.”
A spokesperson for the CDC did not return a phone call seeking comment.
It should have never been brought into existence - it is basically unconstitutional.
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