"The Impact of President Bush's Policies on Women's
Reproductive Health: The Case of UNFPA"
by
Jane Roberts, Co-Founder, UNFPA
Jane Roberts, 700 Cajon, Redlands, CA 92373, julianrob@aol.com 909-793-4578 Lecture at UCLA, Institute of the Environment, School of Public Health, Dean’s Conference Room, School of Public Health, Nov. 13,2003.
34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund www.34millionfriends.org
I am a little grassroot deeply grateful for this opportunity to talk to you about 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund, known by its acronym UNFPA.
34 Million Friends asks a very small thing----$1. But Lois Abraham and I are dead serious when we say we want 34 million of our fellow citizens to come up with that dollar, thereby signaling to our government and the world that our Administration made a terrible decision in not granting to the UNFPA the $34 million Congress had approved, and to the world that WE THE PEOPLE are grateful for our condoms, folic acid, the pill, pre-natal checkups, doctors in the delivery room, fertility treatment, neo-natal units, vasectomies, and Viagra- notice that I put those last two in alphabetical order! And that we want to reach out to the world and say that everyone deserves at least a modicum of what we have. I view this personally too. My husband and I used family planning for several years, then had doctors give advice when I didn’t get pregnant for 3 or 4 years when I wanted to, and then finally when lo and behold, at age 35, I was pregnant, I knew I wasn’t going to die and that I had every chance of having a healthy baby. That baby is sitting here somewhere and will be 27 on Sunday.
From the very beginning, the decision about UNFPA was my measuring stick for our self described compassionate conservative President. He did not measure up. It was a mean- spirited, small-minded decision done for domestic political reasons to please his religious right and his anti UN supporters. So after Secretary Powell announced the decision, I knew I had to do something and the idea came to me at 3 in the morning. Only one of the 6 newspapers I wrote to printed the letter last July that started my campaign “ A week has passed since the Bush Administration decided to deny the $34 million voted by the Congress for the United Nations Population Fund. Ho hum, this is vacation time. Columnists have written about it “Decision to cut off U.N. funds ludicrous” (Ellen Goodman) and newspapers have written editorials of lament. Ho hum. More women die in childbirth in a few days than terrorism kills people in a year. Ho hum. Some little girl is having her genitals cut with a cactus needle. Ho hum, that’s just a cultural thing. As an exercise in outraged democracy, would 34 million Americans please join me and send $1 each to the U.S Committee for UNFPA! That would right a terrible wrong, buy back Colin Powell’s soul and drown out the ho hums. Signed Jane Roberts. A note about Colin Powell’s soul. As I said, he was the one who announced the decision, but up to that time had had nothing but praise for UNPFA, AND his own State Department’s investigative team had found no fault with UNFPA’s program in China and had recommended that the funds be released. Well, as you can see by my letter, I was angry.
And then I started to mail, phone, talk one on one with, or e-mail every individual and group, organization I could think of. And I haven’t stopped. Lois hasn’t either. In October of last year UNFPA invited us both back to New York for a press briefing with Thoraya Obaid, the Saudi woman who is Executive Director and I suppose to see who these slightly daft and nutty ladies were. They asked us how we saw this effort, how serious we were. Lois said she was in until we got our $34 million. I said I was in all the way forever but actually Lois may be in longer than I because it just might take longer than forever. Since our meeting last October, UNFPA has supported us in every way.
The day we got home from New York, a Molly Ivins column appeared where she called 34 Million Friends a splendid symbolic protest, what elation on our part, somehow word had reached her, and then sometime in early Dec. Molly and Ellen Goodman had lunch together in Boston and Molly tells Ellen about it and POW, Ellen’s column appearing on Dec. 22. With these two columns and some other wonderful ones around Christmas time, and our own outreach, literally for months, hundreds and sometimes over a thousand letters arrive every day. In short, when the American people learn about 34 Million Friends, they support it wholeheartedly.
Some absolutely crazy fun and funny and joyful things have happened. I have a folder called Serendipity. Carolyn Donovan the representative of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to the United Nations took part in that Oct. press briefing. That night in NY my husband and I were eating dinner at the Pong Sri restaurant on West 48th ST. in New York and started chatting to the couple next to us. It turned out that she, Carol Leimas, was the former AAUW representative to the UN. What a coincidence! The upshot was that she and a friend Marsha Handel organized a Bark for Women Dog Walk in Central Park, handed out flyers for 34 Million Friends and had quite a turn out of dogs and people!
Here’s one for the books. In early Dec. I’m driving to my Ladies Club pub links golf and I’m listening to Susan Stamberg on NPR doing book reviews on Morning Edition and I tap the steering wheel and say outloud (Come on Susan, call me up!) Well, I get home around 1 pm and her representative HAD called (my husband leaves me this BIG note and I’m in 7th heaven.) I can’t believe it. Well, the upshot was not so funny then, but it is now: We arrange to have me go to a public radio station in Seattle the next week because I’m up there for a 34 Million Friends event and lying in my hotel bed at night, my eyes do not close the whole night, I’m so nervous, and we have our interview (and I’m none too brilliant) and for reasons of scheduling and probably for my lack of brilliance, it never makes it to the air. But, by golly I have been interviewed by Susan Stamberg! And parenthetically, it was before I’d had my media training. Now if someone asks me a discombobulating question I say “ You know, that’s a very good question but What I want to focus on is… and I say what I want to say. I am laughing about this and am being a little facetious, because now that I’ve had just a touch of media training, I can recognize it in a minute when others are interviewed.
Joy- On Sept 10 of last year I got the following email- Jane, did you come up with this idea—It is one of those small, brilliant, wonderful, quiet, moving ideas that remind me of why I am involved in environmental causes. I thank you Jane Roberts whoever you are. It’s nice to wake up to an email like that. And some of the letters on the web—“One dollar at a time you are changing the world.” And my favorite, “In my dream the angel shrugged and said, If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.” So much of this effort has been so joyful. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And you know what? We really DO want to change the world. Our ultimate vision is to encourage a worldwide constituency of millions of people who, by small gifts every year to UNFPA and/or to NGO’s who strive to bring reproductive health care to the world, that this should be A if not THE world’s top priority. In 1994 in Cairo, Egypt, 179 countries adopted a 20 year plan of action calling for universal literacy, the ability for all, men and women, to participate in civil society, a reduction of infant mortality to the lowest possible number and universal access to knowledge about and affordable access to family planning. $17 billion a year was what it was estimated to cost. The poor countries promised 2/3s, the developed world 1/3. Guess what, the developing countries have furnished between 60 and 70 percent of what they promised, the developed world less than 50% with the U.S. at the bottom. Good Grief! What in the world LITERALLY are we doing? On Oct. 8,2003, the UNFPA launched its yearly State of the World Population report with its emphasis on the needs of adolescents. One of every 5 people on earth is between the ages of 10 and 19. That is why demographers predict a world of between 8.5 and 9 billion by the year 2050. What will this mean for humans? The environment? Peace and stability? Where will the world get enough fresh water? A word about PLAN B
On for just a few minutes to Africa. Last Dec. with only about $200,000 in the till, UNFPA was thinking way ahead. They asked Lois and me if we would like to visit UNFPA clinics and if so, where. Lois chose Nicaragua. I am a retired French teacher and have some Senegalese friends so right away I said Senegal. UNFPA added Mali and there I went for 9 days last February.
Here’s a writing booklet funded by UNFPA and the Senegalese government for an elementary school. What does it say on the front? “Little girls deserve as much food, education, and health care as little boys.” That this message needs to be said speaks volumes, that UNFPA is saying it shows the multi-faceted and educational function they fulfill. Here is a safe birthing kit (I hold it up) in this little plastic bag They are distributed by the hundreds of thousands in remote villages by UNFPA and consist in a sterile plastic sheet, a bar of soap, a razor blade to cut the umbilical cord, and string to tie it off. This saves thousands and thousands of lives every year.
(I will show about 10 slides)
I want to show just a few slides of my trip. In Senegal we drove 8 hours due east from Dakar to an extremely rural area where a UNFPA clinic has changed the whole health care picture. These two women’s lives were saved by Cesareans performed by UNFPA trained Doctors in the Goudiry district. Here’s the school where I found the booklet.
Guitar player (this guitar player sings songs about the need for prenatal care and against female genital mutilation in remote villages.
This baby and mother are both anemic and the mother and father will receive contraceptive counseling in order to give the woman time to recover.
These Mali women started a garbage collection business and then with a little money in hand asked the Mali government and UNFPA to help build a clinic in an unbelievably poor area of Bamako, the capital. Here is the result. Voila the clinic!!!
Fistula initiative, Bamako Point G hospital. $500,000 of our first million has gone to this scourge. $40 thousand to this hospital.
I promised this woman in labor on the donkey cart struggling to reach the UNFPA clinic to give birth that if she would let me take her picture I would share it with the world in order to gain support for UNFPA.
I spoke in French at two press conferences, one in Senegal, one in Mali. I appeared on the largest French speaking TV station in West Africa and I said that, that although our government had chosen not to participate in the work of UNFPA, that we the people were trying our best to come through. Both Senegal and Mali have very high infant and maternal mortality death rates.This message was incredibly warmly received.
Other uses for our first million : emergency obstetric equipment in Timor Leste,
Supplies in Ghana to repair women who are suffering from FGM.(female genital mutilation.
Ambulances in Rwanda, training of 1000 health assistants in Eritrea, spreading modern contraceptive information throughout Mongolia, reducing infant and maternal mortality in Zhemgang district of Bhutan. You see people, UNFPA works all over the world in over 140 countries and these countries welcome UNFPA and by our holier-than-thou chopping of these funds, we reduced by 12 and ½ percent UNFPA’s budget, and we caused so much more misery, hardship, and death. No country except the United States of America has ever ever defunded UNFPA for other than financial reasons. Even dirt poor Mali gives about $3000 per year. Shame on us.
34Million Friends has had support (not formal endorsements, I want to make that clear) from myriad organizations and individuals within organizations. The National Wildlife Federation had a big article in their magazine, the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and AAUW, and the League of Women Voters, and human rights groups, individuals within Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres,) Common Cause, People for the American Way, church groups, my local Church Women United, individuals from Middlebury College where I got my MA in French , I had an article in their Alumni Magazine. And on and on.
The Summer edition of MS Magazine had a wonderful article about this effort. Oprah’s O Magazine, November 2003 issue on p 267 says that 34 Million Friends is a darn good cause to give a dollar to. The U.N. Foundation has given us $250,000 and Ted Turner’s other Foundation the Better World Fund is paying Lois’ and my expenses and covering all the overhead. www.34millionfriends.org is our wonderful web site. There are many events planned in the fall for this absolutely idealistic grassroots effort. I’ve just returned from a trip in late Oct. early Nov. to the Canadian Conference on International Health, to Minneapolis, to Philadelphia, to Yale and Bowdoin College, I’m also going to San Francisco to receive an award the American Public Health Association awarded to me and Lois Abraham. Lois and I are a team. The fact that we both came up with this idea is amazing and we have become very good friends.
www.34millionfriends.org is the web address. One can give one’s dollar on the web or mail it to U.S. Committee for UNFPA at 3800 Arapahoe Ave. Suite 210, Boulder, CO 80303.
We can do this people. We can find 34 million wonderful
Americans to send one dollar. We must not fail. It is an incredibly wonderful
message to send to the world. I’m inviting every one of you and all your
friends and families to be a part of it. And finally, every movement needs a
poem, right? So I will close with my poem if you’ll bear with me. (By the way
this is being put to music as we speak and will become a song,
WE are 34 million friends
We ARE 34 million friends
We are 34 MILLION friends
Of the women of the world
Every baby welcome now
Loved and fed and vaccinated
Mothers children learning now
Reading writing educated
No more death while giving birth
Because a midwife’s taking care
No more mothers in the earth
Because a midwife’s helping there.
Woman on a donkey cart
To the clinic on her way
She’ll be safe because she’s smart
Her babe will see the light of day
To AIDS and violence we say NO
Human rights, the way to go!
To family planning we say YES
Surely we can do no less
Governments must do their part
The health of women to ensure
We the people, if we’re smart
Of that we will make doubly sure
And all of us who have so much
One dollar we can share
To show the women of the world
That we the people care.
We are 34 Million Friends
We are going to have our say
We are reaching out to the world
Through the UNFPA