Dear Colleague

A storm of pro-UNFPA propaganda has suddenly been unleashed upon us, with
articles appearing in "The New York Times," the "Milwaukee Journal"
"Sentinel," and other media outlets in recent days.  Why the sudden flurry
of activity?  Because on July 9 population control sympathizers in
Congress will offer an amendment to refund the U.N. population unit and
overturn the Mexico City policy.  This misbegotten amendment would put the
U.S. back in the abortion business, even in China, where women have no
right to refuse.  It should be opposed.

Steven W. Mosher

PRI Weekly Briefing
25 June 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 22

Refund the UNFPA?  No way!

The U.N. Population Fund-which spends a huge chunk of its money each year
lobbying for more funds-has launched a media blitz in the U.S. in support
of yet another raid on the federal treasury.  Standing in the way is the
Bush administration's decision, reaffirmed last year for a second time, to
deny funding to the U.N. group because of its involvement in China's
one-child policy.

So we have the spectacle of "The New York Times" headlining that the U.S.
is "Trying to Isolate the U.N. Population Unit."[1]  Pity the poor UNFPA,
runs the subtext, which is being "blackballed" by the Bush administration.
 "It reminds me of the McCarthy era," whines Sterling Scruggs, longtime
flak for the group.  Next they'll be comparing Bush to Hitler.

The truth is, it's not the U.S. isolating the UNFPA, but the UNFPA
isolating and marginalizing itself.  For 25 years the UNFPA has been the
chief international cheerleader for China's one-child policy, lavishing
upwards of $200 million in funding on the program, and bestowing
prestigious awards on its architects.  How can an agency that calls itself
pro-choice, that brags about promoting "reproductive rights," justify
involvement with a government that sterilizes and aborts women against
their will, and usurps the right of parents to determine the number and
spacing of their children?

But the complicity runs even deeper than this.  Since 1998 the UN
Population Fund has run "model family planning programs" in 32 Chinese
counties, where it claims that there are no forced abortions, no targets
for sterilizations, and no quotas for childbirths.  These counties are
free, the UNFPA assured us, of the abuses which characterize the one-child
policy as a whole.

This fig leaf was exploded when PRI investigated a "model family planning
program."  We found young women being ordered in for forced abortions,
women facing arrest for the "crime" of being pregnant without permission,
and homes destroyed for refusing to comply with abortion or sterilization
orders.  (Visit our website for details
http://www.pop.org/main.cfm?id=178&r1=2.25&r2=2.00&r3=3.00&r4=0.00&level=3&eid=301.)
 All of this was happening under the very nose of the UNFPA desk officer
responsible for the program.

If the UNFPA wants the U.S. to resume funding its programs, it should
start by withdrawing from China.  Its refusal to do so reveals its real
agenda, which has less to do with reproductive rights than with a desire
to drive down the global birth rate even further.  It is, after all, the
U.N. "Population" Fund.


© 2004 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit required.
_________
If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to PRI, please go to
https://pop.org/donate.cfm. All donations (of any size) are welcomed and
appreciated.
_________
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, send an email to:
JOIN-PRI@Pluto.Sparklist.com or email pri@pop.org and say "Add me to your
Weekly Briefing."
__________
The Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights
abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending
counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of
"overpopulation."
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, VA 22630
USA