Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409080023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAIRO, EGYPT LENGTH: Medium
In her opening-day speech, the outspoken prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, framed a key issue of the U.N. population conference: Giving power to women as the way to slow birth rates.
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, the only other female leader present, supported women's equality but took a far more conservative view on abortion and sexual issues.
Bhutto's decision to attend the nine-day conference and buck conservative Islamic opponents was in itself a victory for the organizers. Two other Muslim female leaders, Tansu Ciller of Turkey and Khalida Zia of Bangladesh, backed out.
But Bhutto's rejection of sections of the proposed 20-year blueprint to curb population growth, along with another Vatican attack on abortion, reflected the polarized debate at the conference.
Weeks before it opened, the U.N. conference exploded in controversy over the issues of abortion, birth control and sex education.
The Vatican opposes artificial birth control and abortion in all cases, while Muslim fundamentalists say the draft plan of action promotes promiscuity, homsexuality and a loosening of family ties.
In three preliminary meetings, delegates to the conference agreed to more than 90 percent of the plan of action. But the most contentious issues still must be resolved - reproductive health and family planning services, reproductive rights, adolescent sex education and abortion.
Vice President Al Gore said Monday that participants were ``very close'' to a consensus on the subjects still in dispute. But he predicted the Vatican would not accept the final document despite compromise language being worked out by the European Union.
Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro, a member of the Vatican delegation, reiterated the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to references in the draft to ``reproductive health,'' calling the phrase implicit recognition of abortion accessible to all.
Brundtland, a physician turned politician, received sustained applause when she took on the Vatican's position.
``I have tried in vain to understand how that term can possibly be read as promoting abortions or qualifying abortion as a means of family planning,'' she said. ``Rarely, if ever, have so many misrepresentations been used to imply meaning that was never there in the first place.''
Unsafe abortion is a major public health problem in almost every corner of the globe, she said, and ``a conference of this status and importance should not accept attempts to distort acts or neglect the agony of millions of women who are risking their lives and health.''
When she called for ``decriminalizing abortions,'' the audience of more than 1,000 erupted in sustained applause.
by CNB