US President Bill Clinton said Saturday that he will ask Congress for significantly more funding for domestic and international family planning efforts. In his weekly radio address, Clinton said his 2001 budget proposal will include an additional $169 million for family planning and counseling programs overseas -- a 45% increase over the fiscal year 2000 budget.
     "I am asking Congress to support these funds, and to provide them without restrictions that hamper the work of family planning organizations, and even bar them from discussing or debating reproductive health policies," Clinton said.
     Last year, the Clinton administration reluctantly accepted Congressional restrictions on international family planning aid in a compromise deal to pay almost $1 billion in back dues to the United Nations. Clinton said he would try to remove the restrictions, which ban US funding of private family planning groups that perform or promote abortion (Associated Press/Nando.net, 8 Jan). He has retained a waiver that will allow $15 million in US aid to such family planning groups.
     If passed, Clinton's request would bring total US international family planning assistance to $541 million. He said his approach would best achieve the goals of both sides of the abortion issue (Marc Lacey, New York Times, 9 Jan).

Zero Population Growth Says More Aid Needed
     Peter Kostmayer, executive director of Zero Population Growth, reacted to Clinton's statement by saying he should ask Congress for $1.9 billion in international family planning aid. "Never again should any American president sign legislation containing the global gag rule," Kostmayer said. "It's time the US lived up to the financial commitments it made at the 1994 Cairo population conference to support family planning efforts around the world." The $1.9 billion would "help insure universal access to voluntary family planning," he added.
     Funding for international family planning programs, Kostmayer noted, has been slashed by 30% since 1995. Full funding of such programs, he said, "will dramatically reduce child poverty and maternal and infant mortality. If every child is planned, wanted and loved, we'll have a better, safer less crowded world" (Zero Population Growth release, 7 Jan).