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US Payment to UN Abortion Discord Holds Up
UN Dues and US BudgetBy Eric Schmitt
November 11, 1999
New York Times
Washington - The white-hot domestic issue of abortion is holding up a deal to pay nearly $1 billion the United States owes the United Nations, which in turn is one of the main sticking points blocking a budget deal between Congress and the White House. Up to now, the Republican-controlled Congress and the Clinton administration have refused to budge on what both sides consider a litmus test of their core principles. An unintended consequence is that the abortion fight is threatening to undermine the wholly unrelated issue of United States global leadership.
House conservatives, led by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, are demanding that the United States cut off financing to international organizations that promote abortion rights overseas as the price for paying Washington's back dues. "It's about the issue of using taxpayer money to fund abortions," said Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader and chief Republican negotiator on the issue.
But Clinton has rejected the unanimous advice of his foreign policy advisers to accept Smith's terms, and instead has stayed loyal to a core Democratic issue and an important Democratic constituency, women voters. He has done so even at the risk of increasing world ridicule and opprobrium that the lone global superpower was fast emerging as a global deadbeat. "At its core, this is an issue of free speech and providing health services that affects women's lives," said Terri Bartlett, vice president for public policy at Population Action International, a research and advocacte group.
Despite carving out these hard-line positions, both the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill said the two side were tantalizingly close to striking a deal. "We're very close," Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the assistant Republican leader, said tonight, adding that negotiators were "tweaking" the language of a compromise whose terms he refused to discuss. So much is at stake that neither side dared to declare victory until a final version is reached.
The abortion provision that Smith wants would write into law an executive order issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. Clinton reversed the order in 1993, shortly after taking office. The United States has barred direct financing for abortion since 1973, but the 1984 policy, known familiarly as "Mexico City" since Reagan announced it during a United Nations conference there, denied grants to international family-planning organizations for any purpose if they promoted abortion rights. Since gaining control of Congress in 1994, Republicans have tried to write the provision into law. And since 1997, Smith has pressured Republican Speakers Newt Gingrich of Georgia and now J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois to support him in attaching the abortion provision to bills that would repay the United Nations.
The most fervent supporters of this linkage are in the House. Even Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who staunchly opposes abortion, disagrees with the House approach, largely because it blocks reforms at the United Nations that he wants. A Senate bill sponsored by Helms authorizes $926 million over three years to pay the United States arrears at the United Nations, provided the United Nations meets certain conditions, including reducing budgets and the United States' share of payments.
This year, however, many Republicans are cringing from criticism that the United States could lose its largely symbolic vote in the United Nations General Assembly if it does not pay up. Even The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, cautioned recently that holding the back dues hostage to the abortion language only fueled Clinton's accusation that Republicans are isolationist, and called on Smith to relent. "We are a year away from a presidential election that may again put a Republican in the White House," said the magazine's editorial. "That president will be able to restore the pro-life Mexico City policy with the stroke of a pen." Moreover, the editorial continued, "By seeming to be too cheap to pay our U.N. dues, Republicans will have needlessly handed the Democrats an issue for the 2000 campaign."
Both sides hold out compromises. Abortion rights groups say they would grudgingly accept a provision sponsored by Representatives James C. Greenwood, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York. The measure, which the House approved in July by a vote of 221 to 208, would cut United States financing from international organizations that lobby for abortion rights only in countries where local laws prohibit such lobbying. "We've got problems with it," said Susan Cohen, a vice president for development at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy group. "But if that's the price to pay to get the U.N. dues, we could live with it." But conservatives reject such a compromise as toothless.
One possibility conservatives are discussing is to adopt Smith's provision, but allow Clinton to issue waivers for international organizations that provide abortions or lobby for abortion rights. If Clinton invoked such waivers, however, Congress would penalize the administration by cutting the amount of grants the United States awarded. "Unacceptable," Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said today of the "double waiver" idea. Nonetheless, many lawmakers and advocacy groups sensed a deal was near. "This is the pressure-cooker point," Ms. Bartlett said. na said.
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