In London - As Secretary-General, IPPF

The abortion issue hit the world's headlines and IPPF with a hard jolt. It came with the declaration by the United States delegation to the World Population Conference at Mexico City in August 1984, that the US would no longer fund international family planning programmes that included abortion-related activities in their programmes.

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The 'Mexico City policy' as it came to be called had very serious consequences for IPPF. We did not promote abortion in our programmes and it was part of our stated policy that "abortion is not a method of family planning". But there was a chink in our argument, that we were totally clean, as far as the US new funding conditionality was concerned. This was that the Indian family planning association, one of our leading members, had taken on board, and offered as one of its clinical services, the medical termination of pregnancy. There were some others too who offered MR-menstrual regulation - a neat euphemism for perhaps a case of early pregnancy. As far as IPPF was concerned that caused no problem internally within the federation as each member association could conduct its activities in accordance with the laws of the country. If it was legal in India, it was okay for the FPA to do it.

The IPPF had much to lose by not accepting the US conditionality, actually, around 20 percent of our annual grant income. We fought the issue at Mexico City where I was part of the strong IPPF delegation to the global conference. We took it to Washington" - to USAID - who would have to implement the policy. But we could not turn it around. The Mexico City policy on abortion was coming right from the top; from the White House itself, and was part of President Reagan's appeasement of the conservative far right of American society. The highly influential ‘right to life' lobby had won the day for the time being.