REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : At Population Conference, Frustration Sets In, T-Shirts Go On

At about $10 apiece, they have become one of the hottest-selling souvenirs of a happening that is otherwise short on keepsakes: T-shirts showing the Pope’s white hat with the universal red slash through it.

As the Vatican-inspired abortion debate at the U.N.-sponsored International Conference for Population and Development drew into its fifth day, both die-hard abortion-rights activists and even many anti-abortion activists were wearying of the argument.

Rieneke Ausherman of the International Federation of Family Health printed up the T-shirts in Louisiana long before the conference started, but it wasn’t until the international game of politicking--Would the Vatican sign or wouldn’t it?--went into tiresome extra innings that the T-shirts took off.

Informal working committees met late into the night with the Vatican’s proposed changes on the abortion text, agonizing over whether “legal abortion” should be changed to “permitted abortion” or “where abortion is not against the law.” Hours passed, then days. People flocked to the T-shirt stand.

“A lot of people have bought these. . . . And a number of priests too,” Ausherman said. “They tell me they’re fed up with the bishops, and it looks like everybody else is too. People are frustrated.”

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Not that people are finally ready to stop arguing about abortion. They’re just catching their breath. A press conference of the Women’s Caucus on Thursday nearly broke into a melee when anti-abortion activists started shouting down mainstream feminists, who stood up and started singing “We Shall Overcome” in response.

Stephen D. Mumford, president of a group called the Center for Research on Population and Security, is working the crowd at the conference with a study that purports to show that real population control can’t come about without “the widespread use of abortion.”

“People don’t want to get into this issue,” he said, furtively pulling out a copy of his study, which even adamant abortion-rights activists have asked him to keep quiet about. “But we’re literally misleading the whole of humanity on this if we don’t make people realize that you cannot achieve even a 1% growth rate without abortion rates of at least 500 per 1,000 live births.”

The International Right to Life Committee is also working overtime. Posters of mangled fetuses have disappeared as fast as they could be passed out, so the committee has ordered a new shipment from the United States.

“We really can’t keep up with the demand,” said Olivia Gans of Washington, D.C.

“Generally we have anywhere from four to 10 people at a time over here, particularly the Egyptians. With all the controversy, this has remained a very constructive place, a very positive place: a happy place to be.”

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The code phrase: “The eagle has landed.”

You hear it a lot these days around the corridors of the U.S. delegation’s headquarters at the conference center.

What does it mean? The eagle, in this case, is Pharaoh’s Revenge, a good old-fashioned intestinal devastation, served up Egyptian style. U.S. officials estimate that 60% of the delegation has come down with it (along with assorted flus and colds), and conferees of all nationalities are increasingly finding themselves confined to their hotel rooms.

A young Senegalese delegate had to be taken to the hospital for treatment Thursday, and on Friday, Timothy E. Wirth, undersecretary of state for global affairs and the U.S. delegation’s chief, said something cryptic as he slipped out of the conference hall early: “The eagle has laid lots of eggs.”

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Across the street from the conference center, more than 1,800 non-governmental organizations have gathered for a population forum of their own.

Alongside the expected--the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the International Women’s Health Coalition, Population Action International, UNICEF--are the less than expected. A group of turbaned Sikhs dishes out advice on how yoga and good food can improve women’s reproductive health the natural way. Heifer Project International presents a panel discussion on “Women in Livestock Development.” And then there is the Assn. of Garbage Collectors for Community Development of Egypt.

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One World Now, in connection with the International Population and Family Assn., reserved a meeting room at the Cairo Meridien for the entire week for a series of lectures and discussions called the Conference on Population, Development, Family Life and Ethics.

After the first morning’s session, they canceled the rest and decided to move out to the main conference center with everyone else. There was no one in the audience.

John Parker, an associate of One World Now founder Benton Musslewhite, explains that the idea is to erase national frontiers and place the entire world under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.

“Wars were fought that developed lines all over the world, and Mr. Musslewhite kinda feels we should maybe take a step backwards and erase some of these lines,” Parker said in a slow Louisiana drawl.

“Places like India, it’s overcrowded. People are desperate, and they can’t get out,” he goes on. “There’s some scholar says Texas can hold everybody in India--give ‘em all an acre of land and a house.”

What would Texans think of this idea?

“I don’t suppose they’d like it much,” Parker reflects.

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The oldest delegate is Ione Grannis of Los Angeles, described in the conference’s daily journal, Earth Times, as “92 and passionate.”

Grannis has worked as a Los Angeles County social worker and a counselor for troubled women and unwed mothers for the Salvation Army. In Cairo, she’s representing the United Nations Assn. of the United States.

“It is very frightening to think of all the beautiful people, flora and fauna of this world devastated by the very people who benefit from it,” she said.