Dear Colleague:

I write with good news.  The House Appropriations Committee has just
defeated an amendment by Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) that would have
forced the Bush Administration to give $25 million to the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA).  Special thanks to Congressman Todd Tiahrt (R-KS)
for leading the charge against the Lowey Amendment.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
9 July 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 24

This Year at Least, the U.S. Will Not Fund Organizations that Support
Forced Abortions

Today, the House Appropriations Committee struck a blow against coercive
population control programs.  By refusing, on a vote of 32 to 26, to
refund the UN Population Fund, the Committee in effect criticized China's
forced abortion regime and the organization that supports it. [1]
 
Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, after reviewing information provided
by Population Research Institute, concluded on 21 July, 2002, that "the
PRC has in place a regime of severe penalties on women who have unapproved
births.  This regime plainly operates to coerce pregnant women to have
abortions in order to avoid the penalties and therefore amounts to a
'program of coercive abortion.'"  "...UNFPA's support of, and involvement
in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government
to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion.
Therefore, it is not permissible to continue funding UNFPA at this time."


Nita Lowey was proposing an amendment that would eviscerate a 19-year-old
human rights law-the Kemp-Kasten Amendment-that allows the President to
prevent US funding from going to any organization that supports or
participates in the management of a coercive abortion program.
 
The committee was right to reject it.  Why should the U.S. abandon its
human rights principles to support an organization that refuses to
withdraw from a program of forced abortion?  We should be pressing the
UNFPA to conform to human rights standards instead of lowering those
standards to accommodate a brutal and oppressive one-child policy and the
U.N. population group that supports it.

UNFPA continues to make wild and unsubstantiated claims about the harm
that will be done to "women" if it doesn't get its money.  The truth is
that it is intrusive population control programs themselves that cause
harm to women and children, while siphoning funds away from real health
care needs, such as AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases.
 
I close by quoting Dongfan Ma, who was forced to have an abortion in China
and now lives in the United States in freedom, "Through this denial of
UNFPA funds by President Bush and supported by a bipartisan group of US
Congressional Representatives, conscience and human nature will triumph
over barbaric policies imposed on families in China."


Endnotes
[1]  The "yes" votes (26), in favor of funding the UNFPA were Sanford,
Boyd, Clyburn, Cramer, DeLauro, Dicks, Edwards, Farr, Frelinghuysen,
Hoyer, Jackson, Kaptur, Patrick Kennedy, Kilpatrick, Kirk, Lowey, Moran,
Obey, Olver, Pastor, Price, Rothman, Roybal-Alard, Sabo, Serrano,
Visclosky.
 
The no votes (32), against funding the UNFPA, were Aderholt, Berry,
Bonilla, Crenshaw, Cunningham, Doolittle, Emerson, Goode, Granger, Hobson,
Istook, Kingston, Knollenberg, Kolbe, Latham, Jerry Lewis, Mollohan,
Nethercutt, Northrup, John Peterson, Regula, Rogers, Sherwood, Simpson,
Tiahrt, Vitter, Walsh, Wamp, Dave Weldon, Wicker, Wolf, Bill Young.
 
Absent were (7) Culberson, Fattah, Hinchey, LaHood, Murtha, Sweeney,
Taylor
 

 
© 2004 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
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