She also voted in favor of the 1998 Abortion Funding Amendment, which would have allowed the use of district funds to promote abortion-related activities, but would have prohibited the use of federal funds.

Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, said the repeal of the ban on aid to international family-planning programs involved in abortion-related activities was a major step toward rejoining the U.N. program.

The regulations, issued Feb. 2, 1988, by the Reagan Administration, required family planning centers to keep abortion-related activities "physically and financially separate" from activities financed with Federal funds.

These organizations are already prohibited from spending U.S. money on abortion-related activities, but abortion foes argue that giving them money for birth control will let them divert other resources to providing abortions.

Reversing a policy set by President Reagan in 1984, Mr. Clinton promised to restore American financing of international family planning programs that provide abortions or abortion-related activities, if Congress appropriates the money.

Proposed rules to prohibit abortion-related activities by family planning clinics that receive Federal funds were announced today by Dr. Otis R. Bowen, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

How the government limits the abortion-related activities of such clinics is a sensitive issue.

The policy, continued by the Bush Administration, banned Federal aid to any family planning agencies that so much as mentioned abortion - despite the fact that American foreign aid has been sequestered, by law, from any abortion-related activities since 1985.

The legislative history demonstrates that Congress intended that Title X funds be kept separate and distinct from abortion-related activities.

Moreover, the regulations themselves contemplate that a Title X project would be permitted to engage in otherwise prohibited abortion-related activity in such circumstances.