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Jan. 15th, 2003 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danaerisGot this and was fascinated. More things like this need to happen. Talk about thumbing your nose at Mr. Shrub.
BOSTON -- At first the letters just trickled in to the United
Nations Population Fund. A dollar here, $5 there. It was enough to buy
a few birthing kits or cure one 14-year-old mother of the silent
plague of fistula.
Of course it didn't begin to make up for the $34 million that the Bush
administration denied the international family planning group. But the
trickle didn't stop. It grew all fall until an astonished woman at the UNFPA
decided to invest in an electronic letter opener. Now, it's beginning to
look a lot like Christmas.
Every day, 500 or 600 more letters arrive in the New York office from
Americans bearing gifts to women overseas. Some include a dollar for every
member of the family or for everyone in the office or in the church.
The UNFPA's Mari Tikkanen, who stays after work with other volunteers to
take
the money out of the envelopes, stopping occasionally to read the letters to
each other, says, "I've never seen anything like it." Maybe there hasn't
been anything quite like it.
About six months ago, two women who had never met had the same thought. Jane
Roberts, a retired French teacher, and Lois Abraham, a lawyer, were both
outraged when Bush reneged on funds for the UNFPA. This was money for
contraception and sex education, for maternal health care and AIDS
education.
It would have helped prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000
abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths.
Roberts wrote a letter to the editor of her local paper: "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."
Abraham, meanwhile, asked herself, "How come we aren't screaming about this
from the rooftops?" She sent out an e-mail calling family planning "a
humanitarian issue, not a political one."
Independently, the two women came up with what Roberts called an "exercise
in
outraged democracy." What would happen, they asked, if 34 million Americans
each gave a dollar to make up for the money? So was born "34 Million
Friends."
Does the campaign have an amateurish quality? Hey kids, we could do theshow
right here? So be it. Roberts says, "We want 34 million Americans to have
their own teeny-tiny foreign policy." Maybe we all need one.
From the moment Bush was sworn into office, his administration sacrificed
international family planning to the farthest tip of the right wing of his
party. First came the global gag rule, refusing funds to any group
that would tell a woman where she could get an abortion, even in countries
where abortion was legal. Next came the withholding of money to UNFPA on the
blatantly false grounds that the organization helped the Chinese government
push coercive abortions.
Despite all the hoo-ha about liberating Afghan women, the White House has
never acknowledged that women's freedom includes the freedom to decide when
and how to have children. The women in the poorest parts of the world were
held hostage to domestic politics.
Did the administration think we'd never notice? Never care?
It wasn't enough to withdraw family planning funds.
At the recent, contentious U.N. population conference, our government went
even further. It tried to overturn international agreements.
Asian countries had come to Bangkok to implement the 1994 U.N. Cairo
agreement on population. They wanted to talk about gender equality and
poverty, contraception and HIV. The United States came to unravel the
agreement. It wanted to talk about natural family planning and to delete
any
references to "reproductive health."
Among the U.S. delegates was a man who previously represented the Vatican
and
a woman who lectured the Asians on her own success using the rhythm method.
Our country ended up an isolated minority of one.
If Trent Lott is nostalgic for the wonderful yesteryear before civil rights,
this administration is nostalgic for the days before women's rights. Is it
any wonder that some Americans have responded to 34 Million Friends? This is
an idea that comes with an address, a place where we can offer aid as well
as
dissent, a dollar as well as a message of connection to the women of the
world:
It took months for the campaign to reach its first $100,000. It took just
weeks to add another $50,000. If the goal of $34 million sounds elusive,
UNFPA's Tikkanen says, "When it hit $1,000, I was thrilled. Now I don't
think
anything is impossible."
One dollar per person. Abraham calls it an "entry fee" to have your voice
heard. I call it a pretty low price for a new, improved foreign policy.
Emily Evans Ford
Associate Director
Global Issues Resource Center
Christine Forester
Christine Forester Catalyst
forester@san.rr.com
Contribute, $1, for family planning abroad.
Any contributions are tax deductible if you mail them to the
US Committee for UNFPA
220 East 42nd St.
New York, New York 10017.
http://www.uscommittee.org/main.html
BOSTON -- At first the letters just trickled in to the United
Nations Population Fund. A dollar here, $5 there. It was enough to buy
a few birthing kits or cure one 14-year-old mother of the silent
plague of fistula.
Of course it didn't begin to make up for the $34 million that the Bush
administration denied the international family planning group. But the
trickle didn't stop. It grew all fall until an astonished woman at the UNFPA
decided to invest in an electronic letter opener. Now, it's beginning to
look a lot like Christmas.
Every day, 500 or 600 more letters arrive in the New York office from
Americans bearing gifts to women overseas. Some include a dollar for every
member of the family or for everyone in the office or in the church.
The UNFPA's Mari Tikkanen, who stays after work with other volunteers to
take
the money out of the envelopes, stopping occasionally to read the letters to
each other, says, "I've never seen anything like it." Maybe there hasn't
been anything quite like it.
About six months ago, two women who had never met had the same thought. Jane
Roberts, a retired French teacher, and Lois Abraham, a lawyer, were both
outraged when Bush reneged on funds for the UNFPA. This was money for
contraception and sex education, for maternal health care and AIDS
education.
It would have helped prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000
abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths.
Roberts wrote a letter to the editor of her local paper: "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."
Abraham, meanwhile, asked herself, "How come we aren't screaming about this
from the rooftops?" She sent out an e-mail calling family planning "a
humanitarian issue, not a political one."
Independently, the two women came up with what Roberts called an "exercise
in
outraged democracy." What would happen, they asked, if 34 million Americans
each gave a dollar to make up for the money? So was born "34 Million
Friends."
Does the campaign have an amateurish quality? Hey kids, we could do theshow
right here? So be it. Roberts says, "We want 34 million Americans to have
their own teeny-tiny foreign policy." Maybe we all need one.
From the moment Bush was sworn into office, his administration sacrificed
international family planning to the farthest tip of the right wing of his
party. First came the global gag rule, refusing funds to any group
that would tell a woman where she could get an abortion, even in countries
where abortion was legal. Next came the withholding of money to UNFPA on the
blatantly false grounds that the organization helped the Chinese government
push coercive abortions.
Despite all the hoo-ha about liberating Afghan women, the White House has
never acknowledged that women's freedom includes the freedom to decide when
and how to have children. The women in the poorest parts of the world were
held hostage to domestic politics.
Did the administration think we'd never notice? Never care?
It wasn't enough to withdraw family planning funds.
At the recent, contentious U.N. population conference, our government went
even further. It tried to overturn international agreements.
Asian countries had come to Bangkok to implement the 1994 U.N. Cairo
agreement on population. They wanted to talk about gender equality and
poverty, contraception and HIV. The United States came to unravel the
agreement. It wanted to talk about natural family planning and to delete
any
references to "reproductive health."
Among the U.S. delegates was a man who previously represented the Vatican
and
a woman who lectured the Asians on her own success using the rhythm method.
Our country ended up an isolated minority of one.
If Trent Lott is nostalgic for the wonderful yesteryear before civil rights,
this administration is nostalgic for the days before women's rights. Is it
any wonder that some Americans have responded to 34 Million Friends? This is
an idea that comes with an address, a place where we can offer aid as well
as
dissent, a dollar as well as a message of connection to the women of the
world:
It took months for the campaign to reach its first $100,000. It took just
weeks to add another $50,000. If the goal of $34 million sounds elusive,
UNFPA's Tikkanen says, "When it hit $1,000, I was thrilled. Now I don't
think
anything is impossible."
One dollar per person. Abraham calls it an "entry fee" to have your voice
heard. I call it a pretty low price for a new, improved foreign policy.
Emily Evans Ford
Associate Director
Global Issues Resource Center
Christine Forester
Christine Forester Catalyst
forester@san.rr.com
Contribute, $1, for family planning abroad.
Any contributions are tax deductible if you mail them to the
US Committee for UNFPA
220 East 42nd St.
New York, New York 10017.
http://www.uscommittee.org/main.html
