Possible UNFPA Cuts Rile Activists

WASHINGTON (AP) - Abortion rights advocates Friday accused President Bush of bowing to conservatives when he indicated he may cut some of the $34 million Congress appropriated for a U.N. family planning agency.

The money for the United Nations Population Fund, also known as UNFPA, was included in a $15.4 billion foreign aid bill that Bush signed into law Thursday. The organization helps countries deal with reproductive and sexual health, family planning and population strategy.

Bush made a point of noting in an accompanying statement that it gives him "additional discretion to determine the appropriate level of funding for the United Nations Population Fund."

The fund has always been a lightning rod for conservatives. It often was not funded by the United States during the administrations of Bush's father and former President Reagan.

Bush last year initially proposed $25 million for the organization, an increase from the $21.5 million the fund got during the last year of the Clinton presidency. When key lawmakers last month agreed on $34 million for the agency, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., asked Bush to delete the money.

Smith and other conservatives complain that the U.N. agency sends millions of dollars each year to China, where forced abortions are practiced.

"By their words and actions, the UNFPA has chosen to partner with those who oppress women," Smith wrote in the Dec. 21 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "At best, UNFPA has been the willing 'enabler' of massive human rights violations."

The U.N. agency says it doesn't support abortions but does provide support to hospitals to treat complications of unsafe abortion.

Abortion rights advocates expressed anger at Bush's statement. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., called it "absolutely wrong." Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said any funding cuts would "appease extremism on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable women and children in the world."

Stirling Scruggs, a spokesman for the U.N. agency, said any loss of funds would have a "devastating effect."

The United States provided $600,000 to the fund in November for humanitarian relief in Afghanistan. The money has been used to provide sanitary napkins to Afghan women and medical assistance with labor and delivery, officials said.

BUSH SIGNS FOREIGN AID MEASURE, ENCOURAGED TO ZERO-FUND UNFPA
WASHINGTON, January 11, 2002 (LSN.ca) - Yesterday President George W. Bush signed a massive $15.4 billion foreign aid bill which contains a provision to allow the President to have the final word on funding for the notorious abortion-promoting United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). While the bill suggests funding for UNFPA at $34 million - an increase of $9 million over last year - the amount is a ceiling, leaving Bush the opportunity to zero-fund the organization.
The Population Research Institute (PRI), which recently presented to Congress the results of an investigation into UNFPA's complicity with China's coercive one-child policy, said of the legislation, "President Bush has been handed the perfect opportunity to oppose forced abortion and forced sterilization in China." PRI President Steven W. Mosher said, "He should defund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) because of its support of these and other human rights abuses in China." In September, PRI obtained first-hand evidence from victims of forced abortion and forced sterilization in a UNFPA county program in China. In an attempt to secure funding, UNFPA denied that such abuses take place. But videotaped evidence of abuses in a UNFPA county program in China has been delivered by PRI to the White House.
New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith commented on the passage of the measure saying, "It needs to be fully understood that the ball is in the president's court now, our hope is that the president will look at the sordid complicity of the UNFPA with the Chinese population-control police."
With the annual U.S. March for Life only days away (Jan. 22) pro-lifers are hoping and praying President Bush will announce, perhaps even at the March, a denial of funds for the UNFPA due to the overwhelming evidence of its complicity with abortion. The Mexico City Policy, which is retained in the foreign aid bill, prohibits funding of groups involved in the international provision and promotion of abortion.

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