Millions withheld

The Bush administration's hostile attitude toward reproductive freedom hurts poor women who depend on the U.N. Population Fund for support.

From the start, President Bush has gone along with calls by extremists within his own party to end any U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund, known as UNFPA. The administration has defended its action with the faulty claim that UNFPA's work in China underwrites that country's coercive reproduction policies, including forced abortions. These mostly trumped-up allegations are used as a justification for refusing to release millions of dollars of congressionally appropriated money to fund the agency's work in general.

This mean-spirited act is magnified by the extraordinary good done by UNFPA, which operates in 141 countries providing reproductive services to millions of people in poor communities, including sexually transmitted disease prevention and vital family planning services.

It seems the administration's real motive is to handicap a highly successful international family planning program. That is the only conclusion to be drawn, since the allegations of the UNFPA's complicity with China's notorious coercive abortion practices were repudiated by a review team that was hand-picked and dispatched by the State Department. Nonetheless, in 2002, $34-million was withheld from UNFPA, last year it was $25-million. And this year's appropriation of another $34-million was waylaid on Friday. But if these actions weren't enough, the Bush administration has been taking its disdain toward the agency one step further, by trying to isolate it from other support.

Last year, money was stripped from Marie Stopes International, a British-based charity that works in the developing world to prevent AIDS, because it partnered with the UNFPA in China. Then in June, at the annual Global Health Council conference, three federal agencies refused to send money and delegates owing to the inclusion of speakers from UNFPA. Also, and most disturbing, there have been reports that groups like UNICEF and the World Health Organization have been quietly warned by the administration to stop working with UNFPA as it might jeopardize their future funding.

The actions exhibit a deep-seated hostility toward women's reproductive freedom. The administration has made it clear that it not only opposes abortion but contraception as well, as evidenced by its exclusive promotion of abstinence-only sex education. The losers, of course, are the women in desperately poor and isolated regions who rely on the UNFPA and similar programs as a lifeline - as the only way to obtain the information and resources that allow them to limit the size of their families and avoid sexually transmitted disease.

Many lives have been bettered by the work of the UNFPA, but that is apparently irrelevant to the Bush administration and the right-wing zealots it so faithfully represents.

[Last modified July 17, 2004, 01:00:37]