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Women Denied Help - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum Women Denied Help
New York Times
July 17, 2003In a close vote on Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to maintain a policy allowing the Bush administration to cut off United States funding for the UN Population Fund for the second year in a row in the mistaken belief that the fund colludes with coerced abortions in China.
The population fund is the largest agency in the world focused on women's reproductive health. There was a brief, unremarked ceremony on Monday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that illustrates what the fund does. With help from the fund, the Khair Khana Hospital, once filthy and overcrowded, was reopened with a large staff, modern equipment and the possibility of helping Afghan women with complicated pregnancies deliver their babies safely.
The population fund helps women give birth safely. It fights such debilitations as obstetric fistula, a hideous and difficult complication in pregnancy. Indeed, it is just the kind of organization and work the United States should be supporting.
Instead, conservative Republicans stripped the fund of U.S. support last year because of false accusations that the UN Population Fund has either stood by or helped with coerced abortions in China.
By a vote of 216-211, opponents - who mistakenly believe, or cynically advertise, that they are protecting Chinese women and unborn babies - succeeded in killing an attempt to restore the UN agency's funds in the State Department budget.
The opponents, led by Christopher Smith, a Republican, unfairly described the population fund as an organization with a "long history of complicity in human rights violations" engaged in an "attack on women overseas." These are irresponsible, unsubstantiated accusations. They helped persuade numerous members of Congress that it is wiser to deny the organization U.S. support.
The fact is that the population fund performs no abortions and is working to end coerced abortion in China. An American investigating team sent by the administration last year found "no evidence" that the fund "has supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China." In previous years, Congress has supported the fund with the stipulation that no U.S. money be spent in China. That is unnecessary, but even that would have been better than the misguided and unjustified denial of critically needed help for women in 140 poor countries.
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