Family Planning

WASHINGTON -- Ending the first abortion-related skirmish of the 105th Congress, the Senate approved President Clinton's request yesterday for early release of $385 million in international family-planning funds.The 53-46 Senate vote clears the measure for Clinton's signature."This is a victory for women, children and families all over the world," said the White House press secretary, Mike McCurry.The money had been in limbo because anti-abortion lawmakers were concerned that the United States was supporting population-control groups that promoted abortion overseas.

THOUGHT much about the abortion issue lately? Probably not. And that's the idea.An eerie quiet has come over many of the usually clamorous sources of abortion opposition. From Christian Coalition guru Pat Robertson to hyper-right commentators like Cal Thomas to the pack of Republican presidential runners wheezing ever farther behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the issue is being downplayed. If they are asked, then, yes, they are still for criminalizing abortion once again, but the old fire has been banked, or seems to have been.

WASHINGTON -- White House and congressional negotiators agreed yesterday to legislative language that could restrict abortion advocacy by overseas family planning organizations, in exchange for nearly $1 billion in back dues for the United Nations.The agreement came as the negotiators scrambled to tie up the remaining loose ends on a budget deal they hope Congress can approve this week.One last-minute addition was a $500 million disaster relief package for victims of Hurricane Floyd.Several major items remained in dispute last night, however, most notably a $6.5 billion gap in revenue.

NEW YORK -- When Agnes Nixon, doyenne of the American soap opera, was once asked to share the recipe of her sudsy success, she offered up three ingredients: make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait.It's not clear if Agnes had any purpose for "All My Children" beyond selling detergent. But somewhere along the way, it became clear that if soaps could sell soap, they could sell social change.Enter a young Ms. Greenleaf onto the Chinese television screen. On a rainy fall morning, I am sitting beside Chen Sheng Li of the State Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China, watching a dramatic -- oh well, melodramatic episode of "Ordinary People."

After giving birth, a 19-year-old Baltimore resident headed to Planned Parenthood and got her first injection of the contraceptive Depo-Provera. One year later, she "likes Depo because I don't have time to remember to take the pill."This young mother is one of the many teens who are finding Depo-Provera a more convenient, more reliable method of birth control. In fact, family planning counselors say the reason teen pregnancy rates have dropped in both Baltimore and the nation is due, in part, to Depo-Provera.

Dr. Andrew T. Wiley, a former surgeon and family planning specialist with federal and state agencies, died of a heart attack Saturday at his Columbia home. He was 74.For 20 years until he retired in 1991, Dr. Wiley was a family planning specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Maryland Maternal Health and Family Planning Office. Earlier, he served with the Peace Corps from 1968 to 1970 in Tonga.After he retired, he was a volunteer public policy adviser at the Population Institute in Washington.

A FEW YEARS ago, a coalition of family planning organizations in New York state received a telephone call from a perplexed 19-year-old woman. The outpatient center where she had been receiving contraceptive injections had just turned her away, informing her that after a merger they no longer offered the service.The young woman, already a mother, explained that she was trying to finish school and that another pregnancy could prevent her from reaching that goal. But the clinic gave her no referrals.

Katherine Oettinger,94, an expert on raising retarded children and a member of four presidential administrations, died Oct. 3 in Carmel, Calif.President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed her as chief of the Children's Bureau in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1957.When the bureau was abolished in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson named her deputy assistant secretary for family planning and population.She retired from the government in 1970, when the Nixon administration abolished the post, and traveled the world as a population control and family planning expert.

ALTHOUGH THE $2.25 million grant from a charity controlled by Microsoft Corp.founder Bill Gates isn't the largest gift to Johns Hopkins' School of Hygiene and Public Health from a private source, the contribution is significant: It will support public health initiatives that have made Hopkins revered in corners of the world where people have never heard of Baltimore.The Gates gift, spread over five years, will fund a Family Planning Leadership Education Institute to help health care leaders in developing countries design, administer and evaluate their own family planning efforts.

THANKS to a 53-46 vote in the U.S. Senate, foreign aid funds for family planning programs will not be subjected to a punitive and administratively wasteful delay, as last year. That is good news for families around the world that depend on these programs for contraceptives and reproductive health care.U.S. law has long prohibited the use of aid funds for abortions, and abortion is illegal in most countries that receive family planning aid. That hasn't stopped abortion opponents from opposing programs that help families space their children far enough apart to give infants a better chance of survival and mothers a better chance of preserving their health.

The Food and Drug Administration, announcing Wednesday that it would allow 17-year-olds to buy the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B without a prescription, signaled a major shift in the agency's approach to a long-simmering family planning issue. The decision follows a ruling last month from a federal judge who rejected a Bush administration policy that allowed nonprescription sales of the pill only to people 18 or older, requiring younger girls to consult a doctor before they could get it. The FDA's announcement was another example of the new priorities of the Obama administration, which in the past three months has moved to reverse several Bush-era restrictions on family planning services.

WASHINGTON - Stepping quickly into a national abortion debate he largely avoided as a candidate, President Barack Obama overturned yesterday a controversial ban on U.S. support to international aid groups that provide abortion services. Reversing the so-called "global gag rule" was a top priority of abortion-rights supporters, who have long criticized the regulation as imperiling women's health, particularly in developing nations. The new president tried to cast his decision as a breakthrough in the decades-long debate over the federal government's involvement in family planning.

BOSTON -- Do you worry that things are getting too touchy-feely on the home front? Are you afraid that the plea for common ground is becoming the all-too-common wisdom? Do you wonder if the culture warriors are becoming pacifists? Cynics, take heart. We offer you advance word from the troops preparing for the annual March for Life marking the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade on Monday. The parade's theme this year is: "Thou Shalt Protect the Equal Right to Life of Each Innocent Human in Existence at Fertilization.

IN HINDSIGHT, a plan to invite the passionately anti-Bush activist group MoveOn.org to participate in a federally supported conference on world health issues was a mistake akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull, sponsors acknowledge. Neither George Soros nor the left-leaning organization he finances actually took part in the Global Health Council's international meeting last week. But the mere connection was enough to raise the usual conservative grumbling about health professionals not wedded to the president's ideological agenda to an intimidating roar.

Six women from the Baltimore area who have worked for social justice were recognized last night at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in Pikesville at a "Women Who Dared" Hanukkah celebration sponsored by the Massachusetts-based Jewish Women's Archive. Honored were: Elana Brownstein, 16, a peer educator for New Jewish Equation, a program counseling students and parents about at-risk behaviors. Shelley Cole Morhaim, a filmmaker and founder of the nonprofit Earthome, established to promote sustainability and environmental education in the Chesapeake Bay region.

NEW YORK -- Secretary of State Colin Powell must be feeling a bit like Mark Twain did after hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal. "The report of my death was an exaggeration," Twain remarked. Or maybe the retired general feels like Rodney Dangerfield, who "don't get no respect." Either way, questions have resurfaced recently in the major media about whether Mr. Powell is on the verge of quitting his post out of frustration with the Bush White House over the Middle East, overseas family planning funds and other thorny issues.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton said yesterday that he would urge Congress to reverse course on a law that he reluctantly signed that bans U.S. money from going to international organizations that perform abortions or promote abortion rights. Congressional Republicans insisted on the abortion-funding ban as part of a spending package eagerly sought by the administration to free nearly $1 billion that the United States owed to the United Nations. Clinton's compromise drew the wrath of abortion-rights advocates.

WASHINGTON -- White House and congressional negotiators agreed yesterday to legislative language that could restrict abortion advocacy by overseas family planning organizations, in exchange for nearly $1 billion in back dues for the United Nations.The agreement came as the negotiators scrambled to tie up the remaining loose ends on a budget deal they hope Congress can approve this week.One last-minute addition was a $500 million disaster relief package for victims of Hurricane Floyd.Several major items remained in dispute last night, however, most notably a $6.5 billion gap in revenue.

NEW YORK -- When Agnes Nixon, doyenne of the American soap opera, was once asked to share the recipe of her sudsy success, she offered up three ingredients: make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait.It's not clear if Agnes had any purpose for "All My Children" beyond selling detergent. But somewhere along the way, it became clear that if soaps could sell soap, they could sell social change.Enter a young Ms. Greenleaf onto the Chinese television screen. On a rainy fall morning, I am sitting beside Chen Sheng Li of the State Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China, watching a dramatic -- oh well, melodramatic episode of "Ordinary People."

THOUGHT much about the abortion issue lately? Probably not. And that's the idea.An eerie quiet has come over many of the usually clamorous sources of abortion opposition. From Christian Coalition guru Pat Robertson to hyper-right commentators like Cal Thomas to the pack of Republican presidential runners wheezing ever farther behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the issue is being downplayed. If they are asked, then, yes, they are still for criminalizing abortion once again, but the old fire has been banked, or seems to have been.