"Interpretive" Abortion Policy

Population Control
"Interpretive" Abortion Policy
William Norman Grigg
Source: The New American
October 17, 1994

At Cairo, the Clinton Administration repeatedly issued assurances that it would not seek the establishment of a "new international right to abortion." These guarantees were a necessary political expedient in the quest for a "consensus" in support of the Cairo program. Unpersuaded national delegations from Catholic and Muslim countries approved the document with reservations, many of them stating in unambiguous terms that "life begins at conception." The history of the UN population control effort suggests that these expressions of pro-life values cherished by sovereign states will have little impact upon the world body's anti-natalist plans.

The Clinton Administration's record of support for abortion overseas suggests that its Cairo "compromise" position will be as revocable as Bill Clinton's promise of a "middle-class tax cut." One of Mr. Clinton's first acts as President was to repeal America's endorsement of the UN's "Mexico City" guidelines, which "forbade" funding of groups which use abortion as a method of "family planning." On April 1, 1993, Administration spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers announced that abortion was part of the Administration's "overall approach to population control."

On May 11th of the same year, Timothy Wirth gave an address to the UN in which he declared, "A government which is violating basic human rights should not hide behind the defense of sovereignty. Difficult as it is, we must also discuss thoroughly the issue of abortion .... Our position is to support reproductive choice, including access to safe abortion." This position was formally reiterated in an October 1993 State Department cable which was sent to diplomatic posts worldwide.

On March 16th of this year the State Department issued an "action cable" to all U.S. overseas diplomatic posts instructing them to conduct "diplomatic interventions" on behalf of U.S. "priorities" for the Cairo conference. Those "priorities" included "assuring ... access to safe abortion." The cable unambiguously declared, "The United States believes that access to safe, legal and voluntary abortion is a fundamental right of all women" (emphasis added). The action cable also insisted that the Administration would be seeking "stronger language on the importance of access to abortion services" at the Cairo conference.

Disclosure of the contents of the State Department cables created a public outcry and a diplomatic scandal. Shortly before the Cairo conference, both Vice President Al Gore and Timothy Wirth publicly denied that the Clinton Administration had ever sought to create a universal "right" to abortion. Gore was particularly emphatic during a National Press Club address, declaring that the "United States has not sought, does not seek, and will not seek an international right to an abortion" -- an unambiguous lie.

During a question/answer session on September 5th at the ICPD NGO Forum, Vice President Gore was challenged by Jim Miller of the Population Research Institute to explain the contradiction between the position claimed for the Administration by Gore and the position defined in the State Department cables. Gore reiterated his insistence that the Administration does not seek "to establish a new international right to abortion," and then launched into a labored and self-contradictory soliloquy:

The telegram in question was an internal cable inside the State Department, not an expression of policy. It may have been worded in a way that opened it to different interpretations than I would place on it, but not the one that you placed on it. In any event, it was not and is not a statement of U.S. policy. What I have said, and what President Clinton has said, is our policy. If it was inelegant wording -- some internal communication that is misinterpreted -- please accept the fact that it is a misinterpretation ....

I don't think that it's fair to characterize them in the way that you do. I understand that people of good will can read language and come up with different interpretations. I think that language was vulnerable to different interpretations, although not the one that you placed on it. And I understand that, and I'm not saying that -- you know -- that that language was perfect. But neither was it a statement of U.S. policy; neither was it an official document setting out the position of the United States.

This statement -- an involuted and petulant lie worthy of Bill Clinton himself -- is a capsule summary of the approach taken by the Administration when it gets caught. Gore was saying, in effect, "We never said it. You can't prove that we said it. Well, all right, we said it, but you've misinterpreted what we said."
-- W.N.G.