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Reuters, January 12, 2005 Sen. Clinton Chides Bush on Women's Health Policy NEW YORK – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Bush administration was making it hard for the poor to receive the full range of reproductive health services by putting too much emphasis on abstinence to combat AIDS. Speaking at a dinner to hundreds of women's rights and health activists on Tuesday night, the New York Democrat urged advocacy groups not to give up "despite the less-than-friendly atmosphere we currently face in Washington with the current administration." President Bush administration is backing Uganda's policy on AIDS prevention, called ABC, which stands for abstinence, being faithful and condom use. But at international conferences the United States puts the emphasis on abstinence rather than contraceptives, especially among single people. "ABC is a good strategy, but it has three parts to it and we need to remind the administration of that," Clinton told the International Women's Health Coalition, which funds and helps women's health projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. "There are so many strategies that we know work and we are not yet fully committed in our government to implementing those strategies," she added. Clinton noted the administration had cut funds to any organization that provided abortions or advocated counseling or legalization of abortion. But she said that some 20 million women worldwide risked unsafe abortions every year and about 68,000 in poor countries die from the consequences of such unsafe procedures. "So I hope we will do more to try to protect against these ill-thought-out policies by this administration," Clinton said, Clinton was a key speaker at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing, which she said decided that "reproductive health care and family planning service is a basic right," she said. Similar decisions on the right of women to have access to a range of health care and education were taken by more than 100 nations at a 1994 U.N. Population Conference in Cairo. Home About Us Newsletters News Archives Donate
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