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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
administrations 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 Chinas 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 here)
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.
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