Ipas > The cost of the United States' unpaid bill: women's lives

The cost of the United States' unpaid bill: women's lives

July 8, 2004

By failing to live up to financial commitments it made in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, the United States is undermining global efforts to eradicate poverty and illness, to promote development, and to protect the environment.

Photo courtesy of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Ipas today joined other concerned citizens and organizations in calling on the U.S. government to make good on its promise to invest in a more hopeful future for women, children and men worldwide. By failing to live up to financial commitments it made in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, the United States is undermining global efforts to eradicate poverty and illness, to promote development, and to protect the environment.

“Ipas has worked for more than 30 years to end preventable deaths and injuries of women from unsafe abortion,” said Anu Kumar, the organization’s Executive Vice President for Development and Communications. “The Cairo Programme of Action endorsed a comprehensive approach to health, development and the environment that, if implemented, would have a huge impact on unsafe abortion and other public-health crises.”

At an event today in the nation’s capital, a coalition of 39 nongovernmental organizations representing tens of thousands of American citizens presented a symbolic overdue invoice to the U.S. government. The invoice indicates that the United States has contributed only about one-third of the $12 billion it pledged to pay between 1996 and 2001 for health, education and other programs intended to improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world. Researchers focusing on the reproductive-health aspects of the Cairo agreement estimate that the $8.2 billion shortfall in U.S. funding has resulted in:

113 million unintended pregnancies
50 million unplanned births
48 million induced abortions
3 million infant deaths
1 million children losing their mothers
309,800 pregnancy-related deaths, including 114,626 from unsafe abortions.

“Unsafe abortion is the easiest cause of maternal mortality to prevent,” said Kumar. “Too often, though, the United States has hindered rather than supported Ipas’s and others’ efforts to address this and related problems. As Americans, we call on our government to pay its fair share.”

Ipas is one of 39 U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations that have come together in a campaign called “A Mother’s Promise the World Must Keep” to reaffirm support for the Cairo consensus. Almost 21,000 individual activists have signed a petition and several dozen U.S. elected officials have issued proclamations supporting the campaign. More information about the “A Mother’s Promise” campaign is available at www.amotherspromise.org.

Ipas is the only international nongovernmental organization dedicated entirely to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortion. Based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the organization has offices in 11 countries and working partnerships in many more. Ipas’s work includes training health-care providers, working with program managers to optimize health-service delivery, promoting appropriate reproductive-health technologies and partnering with policymakers and advocates to bring about positive changes in health policies and practices. More information, including a press kit, is available at www.ipas.org.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258