column Dont waste Cairos gains on population issues
By ROSEMARY RADFORD
RUETHER
Most Americans probably have little recollection of the United
Nations Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, Egypt, in
September 1994. Yet this conference and its Program of Action are viewed by
many as a paradigm shift in the way issues of global population are addressed.
In previous U.N. conferences (Bucharest, Romania, 1974, and Mexico
City, 1984), the approach was primarily demographic and economic. Population
was seen as a "problem" of rising numbers, particularly among poor nations, to
be curbed. Development was defined by industrialism and rising gross national
product.
The Cairo conference challenged these approaches. The needs of
people, particularly the poorest, must be central to development, not a rising
gross national product that may only reflect growing wealth for the rich.
Development must also be ecologically sustainable, not steadily impoverishing
the regenerative capacity of the earth.
Eradication of poverty and just sharing of development among all
people must also challenge overconsumption by wealthy nations and classes.
There must be particular concern for vulnerable populations, for children,
especially girls, migrants, refugees and indigenous peoples.
For the first time, concerns for population were located in the
context of womens human rights. Instead of treating women simply as
objects of population policy, women must be addressed as human moral agents of
reproduction in their own right, in partnership with men. Key to population
reduction is a broad social development of women, incorporation into full and
equal educational and employment opportunities and participation in family and
community decisions. Coercion in family planning, either for or against, was
firmly rejected in favor of a plurality of contraceptive options in the
framework of womens and family health.
Abortion was not recommended as a means of family planning,
although abortion should be safe where legally available. It was recognized
that criminalizing abortion does not reduce recourse to it but rather assures
that it will be unsafe and will cause high levels of maternal injury and death.
Cairo called for abortion to be safe but also for the need for abortion to be
reduced through sexual education and family planning.
The Vatican delegation, in alliance with conservative Muslims,
distinguished itself at the Cairo conference by standing against these
principles of womens rights to reproductive agency, a plurality of
methods of contraception and safe abortion.
The "Cairo Plus Five" process refers to a review of the
implementation of the Cairo program that the United Nations is undertaking
through meetings in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 8-12, and in New York March
22-30 and June 30-July 2. One point of contention is the failure of the United
States to provide the funding promised in Cairo five years ago.
There is a danger, however, that the review will focus only on
funding, or on how many family planning centers have been created. In short,
the review could slip back to the numbers game and ignore the significant shift
to a women- and people-centered value orientation. Moreover, the religious
voice may be present, as it was in Cairo, only to attack the emphasis on
womens reproductive agency.
Several new networks have been founded in recent months in an
effort to ensure that other voices will be heard. One is Catholic Voices, an
international network of Catholic ethicists and activists who met in Mexico
City in 1998. Catholic Voices issued a study that evaluated the Cairo program
as substantially in accord with the best of Catholic tradition and called on
Catholics to support it.
In January 1999, an interfaith network of religious leaders from
the Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu traditions met in
Rome to evaluate the program from the perspective of religious ethics. This
group, calling itself Religion Counts, saw the program as in substantial accord
with the best traditions of their heritages. While acknowledging that the
worlds religions have often accepted and promoted the subjugation of
women, this was seen as changing today as religions recognize that their
principles of human rights must now include women equally.
These two groups, Catholic Voices and Religion Counts, plan to be
active in The Hague and New York conferences. They hope to bring together two
concerns: first, speaking on behalf of the ethical principles in the Cairo
program, so they are not lost in a reversion to mere numbers and funding; and
second to make the voices of progressive Catholics and other people of faith
heard in U.N. deliberations, which have heretofore been dominated only by the
negative voices of conservative spokesmen.
Religion Counts is cosponsored by the Park Ridge Center for the
Study of Health, Faith and Ethics in Chicago, and Catholics for a Free Choice
in Washington. Both the Rome declaration of Religion Counts and the Mexico City
study, Catholics and Cairo, are available through Catholics for a Free
Choice in Washington.
Rosemary Radford Ruether is professor of theology at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Ill.
National Catholic Reporter, March 5,
1999
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