Family Planning

HANOI, Vietnam -- The phrase on almost everyone's lips in Vietnam is "theo kip," which means "catch up," as in this impoverished nation catching up with the rest of the world. But the government is learning that prosperity is also linked to another expression: "family planning."Women in Vietnam have an average of 3.8 children each -- the highest fertility rate in the region. In Thailand, the figure is 2.9 children; China, which has gone so far as to monitor women's menstrual cycles and to insist on abortions, has reduced its fertility rate to 2.The fertility rate in Vietnam ensures that even if new family planning programs prove successful, the population will continue to grow for at least another 50 years.

In many areas of foreign policy, China presents unique problems. For instance, critics have argued that the regime should be denied most-favored-nation trade status as punishment for its human rights abuses. But President Clinton, who agreed with those critics in last year's campaign, ended up renewing China's trade relationship. That turnaround came as no surprise to many long-time observers. After all, a country with 1.17 billion people -- 22 percent of the world's population and this country's fastest-growing market -- carries clout in trade issues simply by weight of numbers.

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.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration gained the Supreme Court's permission yesterday for another anti-abortion policy aimed at private groups that receive federal government funds -- this time, a policy focused on hospitals and clinics in other countries.Without comment, the court left intact two decisions by the same lower court upholding the so-called "Mexico City policy," which denies federal family planning grants to private hospitals or groups overseas if they perform or promote abortions.

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.

One of the ironies in the vast disagreements between the Roman Catholic Church and family planning groups is that both seek to uphold human dignity, human rights and the worth of each individual. For the church, however, contraception remains a sin, and some statements from the church even claim that the pill and forms of birth control other than periodic abstinence have not liberated women, but rather enslaved them.To mark World Population Day yesterday, the president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation released a letter he sent to Pope John Paul II asking for an open dialogue between the church and family planners.

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.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Ahaf Bashir runs a family planning clinic in Faisalabad, Pakistan, a poor industrial city of 2.5 million. Nothing she has heard in a week of speeches at the global population conference will make her work easier, she says."

TWO SCIENTISTS testified before a congressional committee recently that an import ban on the French "abortion pill" known as RU-486 has stymied research into the drug's effectiveness in treating other diseases. The ban is a clear victory for anti-choice forces, whose agenda goes far beyond halting surgical abortions. The movement has also been successful in eroding the right to birth control, a right that the overwhelming majority of Americans support and that few realize is even under attack.

FAMILY planning was not something you talked about. Peopl said we were corrupting the morals of society in addition to interfering with people's very private affairs."