
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 23, 1993                   TAG: 9311230182
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

U.S. RESUMES MONEY FOR ABORTION COUNSELING

The Clinton administration Monday gave $13.2 million to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, ending a decade-old Republican-ordered ban on using U.S. funds for overseas population programs that include information or counseling on abortion.

The grant is the first part of a five-year, $75 million commitment by the Agency for International Development to the federation, which effectively had been barred from access to U.S. foreign aid funds since 1984.

AID Administrator J. Brian Atwood also announced that the United States intends to resume funding in January to the U.N. Fund for Population Activities and other organizations that could not meet the Republican-dictated test for sharing in the approximately $430 million that the United States provides annually for foreign birth-control activities.

"Let me state plainly the view of the Clinton administration: Free and uncontested access to information about family planning and to a range of methods and services is a fundamental human right," Atwood said at Monday's signing ceremony. "It seems to us that the right to have children and the right to choose the number of children you will have is a fundamental human right."

By law, all U.S. government population agreements with private or international organizations - including the one signed Monday with Planned Parenthood - prohibit the use of American foreign aid for abortion-related activities. U.S. officials also said Monday that when grants to the U.N. fund are resumed, AID will continue to bar the U.N. agency from using any of the money for abortions or coercive birth control practices in China.

by CNB