(CNSNews.com) - Debate over sex education will shift next week from Washington, where the Bush administration is promoting abstinence, to the global stage, where supporters of abortion rights and birth control hope to influence the May 8-10 United Nations Special Session on Children.

Among the U.N.'s stated goals for the summit are to find ways to reduce maternal and infant mortality, stop the spread of AIDS, and cut out exploitation and poverty among children. But the agency also wants to ensure that "all individuals of appropriate age, especially women and adolescent girls, have full access to affordable, quality reproductive care," according to the summit agenda.

Definitions of "affordable, quality reproductive care," vary.

A White House proposal to spend $50 million a year to educate young people about sexual abstinence, approved last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is unrelated to any action the United Nations might take. Nevertheless, it's under attack by those anticipating the U.N. Special Session on Children.

Julia Zajkowski, a Consultant Legal Advisor for Global Projects at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, believes abstinence-only education is wrong-headed.

"Abstinence-only initiatives of conservatives in Congress ... would unfortunately only roll back progress made on recognition on adolescent reproductive rights," she said.

Lindy Blodgett, a 19-year-old student volunteer with Planned Parenthood Global Partners, said adolescents in the U.S. and across the globe need more information about contraception.

"Decisions about our sexuality are among the most important and personal decisions that we make in our lives," Blodgett said. "Yet many people my age in the U.S. and around the world have very little access to information and services they need to make healthy and informed choices."

Blodgett added that any discussion of such issues should "start with trusting that youth are capable on making healthy decisions for themselves."

"We must trust young people as decision makers in their reproductive choices and sexuality," Blodgett said. "This does not mean that youth want to be abandoned to fend for ourselves without information and guidance.

"We want to be given information about our choices and support to make the decisions that are best for us," she said.

Blodgett said young people need "information about [sexually transmitted diseases] and pregnancy, as well as open dialogue about relationships, sexual orientation of youth, and all other aspects of our sexuality.

"I am particularly addressing the overwhelming obstacles for youth in this country and elsewhere to get safe, confidential, contraceptive and abortion services," Blodgett said. "This includes criminalized contraception use and abortion in many countries, abstinence-only education and medically inaccurate sexuality education taught in schools and the U.S., and parental consent laws for abortion in the U.S."

Blodgett said aid workers in the field, not politicians, should determine policy.

"[Policy] needs to be based on the idea that women are the rightful primary decision makers in their fertility. This includes adolescent women," Blodgett said.

"It must also be based on the idea that health care workers in foreign countries are better able to determine what services and information are needed to meet the needs in their community than policy makers in the United States are," she said.

Wendy Wright, spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, said the changes proposed by pro-abortion and pro-contraception advocates would end up causing more harm than good.

"The case in most of these countries they are talking about is that the people don't have clean water, don't have medicine, and many are malnourished," Wright said. "Those are deadly combinations for giving pills or devices into those bodies.

"They are actually putting these women's health at risk," Wright said. "They obviously have no concern for women, they obviously have a political agenda."

Wright said as far as stopping the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV are concerned, very few contraceptives are effective.

Therefore, "abstinence is the better answer," she said.

"These groups are so committed to illicit sex, that they are willing to put people at risk for HIV, just to preserve the right to sex," Wright said. "If they were really worried about women, they would be concerned that women have the right to stay healthy.

"These groups rely on deception, deception that condoms are always effective, deception that you can have illicit sex with a number of partners and not suffer from it," she said. "They are part of the problem, not the solution."