U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton Denounces Govt’s Intervention In Family Planning

Clinton underscored that governments should not be involved in making decisions on planning one's own family and mentioned China's policy of one child and Romania's policy promoting five children per women as negative examples in this respect.

"I've always believed that the government should not intervene in decisions of such intimacy. And we can see through history what happens when governments do. When governments have a policy of one child, as China has had, and where that policy is implemented by forced abortions, that is abhorrent. And when governments like the communist government in Romania had policies promoting five children per women, which denied women the opportunity to plan their own families, the result was a tragic problem with children being given up and being put into orphanages," Clinton said.

"This is an issue of great concern to me and to my government, and we are promoting a global health initiative that will emphasize maternal and child health, and we are promoting a greater access to contraception - both male and female contraception - and we are also looking for ways to make women's choices so that they can avoid abortion - more realistic by providing support for them," Clinton added.

Clinton also said Canada plans to make maternal health a top priority for the G8 Summit, stressing that Canada has already set off debates on whether or not family planning, contraception and even abortion should be part of this initiative.

Asked if abortion and contraception should be part of this initiative, Clinton said that is for Canada to decide.

"I've worked in this area for many years. And if we're talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion," Clinton said.

Abortion was a felony in Communist Romania from 1966 to 1989, which led many women to dangerous back-alley abortions. Within 20 years, some half a million women had died from having botched illegal abortions.

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