Washington D.C., Sep 13, 2007 / 08:11 am
President Bush has withheld funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the sixth straight year because it continues to engage in programs of forced abortion and sterilization. Over the last six years the president has refrained from giving the UNFPA $200 million under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment.
The research behind the president’s decision comes from work done by the Population Research Institute (PRI) between 1998 and 2001.
PRI found violations in several countries. Chinese family planning officials told investigators that there was "no distinction" between the work that they were doing in a given area of China and the UNFPA's work there.
They also discovered that the UNFPA itself spoke of coercive sterilizations in Peru in an internal report published in 2000, calling them "family planning decisions made external to the person." (The UNFPA later denied that this report existed.)
In 2000, the UNFPA smuggled abortion devices into Pakistan under the guise of reproductive health kits labeled "for safe delivery." Refugee women were pressured into accepting abortions.
Reacting to the findings, President Bush in 2001 decided to slash $34 million from the UNFPA budget, money that would have contributed directly to their forced family-planning accounts.