One of the most horrific abuses ever practiced on women and children is forced abortion. I do [not] even think we can imagine the pain and suffering inflicted upon women who are told by their government that the child they are carrying and protecting in their body must be brutally killed with chemical weapons – poison shots – or dismembered with a surgical knife. I do not even know if we can comprehend what goes through a young woman’s mind as she sits in the waiting room of the government family planning clinic knowing that her entire future and employment situation-and that of her family is dependant [sic] on the government ordered death of her unborn child. The terror of forced abortion is a human rights abuse of the greatest magnitude – and it is carried out against women and children with appalling and sickening efficiency in China.
So spoke U.S. Representative Christopher H. Smith, then the vice chairman of the House International Relations Committee, on October 17, 2001, as he described China’s brutal enforcement of its egregious one-child policy. Any decent person should be shocked by such cruelty. And yet, believe it or not, the United Nations chooses to pour millions of dollars into such programs year after year.
I’m not exaggerating. The culprit is the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a program of the United Nations that is dedicated to stabilizing world population, supposedly by promoting reproductive rights and education. The UNFPA has claimed that it does not fund or promote abortion, but as is often the case with the United Nations, claims are starkly different from reality. The UNFPA has invested millions of dollars in China’s “Family Planning” programs. As Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte stated in July of 2008:
UNFPA provides support for and participates in the management of the Chinese government’s program of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.
In fact, Representative Smith, previously quoted, noted that the UNFPA administrator praised China for its population-curbing policies, saying:
In March of this year the People’s Daily reported that Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, newly-appointed executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, “praised that over the past 20 years, China has seen notable achievements made in population control by implementing the family planning policy. It has thereupon played an active role in curbing the population growth across the world.” Imagine, the wholesale killing of millions of babies and the massive victimization of millions of women is deemed a “notable achievement” by the top UN population control bureaucrats. That seems to me to be breathtakingly cruel. Anyone who cares about human rights should be shocked.
Yes, it is shocking. But the real shock comes when one realizes this: President Obama, President Clinton, and the Democratic presidents before them have granted the UNFPA millions of dollars in U.S. funding each year. And members of our media have praised them for it, ignoring clear evidence that the UNFPA is a supporter of coercion. An editorial in the New York Times on October 19 declared:
Mr. Romney also vows to renew another of George W. Bush’s shameful policies (which was ended by President Obama), which blocked the United States from contributing to the United Nations Population Fund[.] … Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Romney has embraced the bogus charge that the Population Fund supports coerced abortions in China, ignoring a State Department investigation that found no evidence for that claim. In fact, the fund has helped promote a voluntary approach to family planning. The annual federal contribution to the fund is now down to $35 million, compared with $55 million in fiscal years 2010 and 2011.
The New York Times has grossly twisted the facts. Remember, the State Department in 2008 confirmed, not denied, that the “UNFPA provides support for and participates in the management of the Chinese government’s program of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.” Additionally, I would hardly call praise of China’s policies from the mouth of the UNFPA director “bogus.”
But the UNFPA’s shame goes far beyond China. Another example of their brutality is seen in Peru. Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), wrote in July of 2002:
In January 1998, PRI sent researcher David Morrison to Peru to investigate reports that women were being forcibly sterilized. What he discovered was a nationwide campaign, aimed specifically at sterilizing poor and working class women, especially ethnic minorities. The program operated by sending mobile sterilization teams, who would suddenly appear in an area and then leave as quickly, after sterilizing as many women as possible in a short time. Doctors and medical workers were given incentives to fill sterilization quotas. And these sterilizations were carried out in dirty rooms, with unsterilized equipment; post-operative care was nonexistent.
When a new government came into power in 2000 in Peru, the brutality ended, but only after many women had died from unsanitary forced sterilizations. The new Peru congressional commission launched an investigation of the campaign in the aftermath of the suffering. The final report gives many chilling details of the sterilization campaign, including the fact that the UNFPA was the “technical secretary” of the campaign. Not only that, but the United States under the Clinton administration was contributing funds to the UNFPA at the time, and thus contributing to the victimization of women.
I could go on and on. I could detail how the UNFPA gave out abortion kits in Libya and in Haiti. I could discuss the numerous investigations and testimonies before Congress that implicate the UNFPA in brutality and corruption.
But my point is this. Funding the UNFPA is shameful. And it is doubly shameful for the New York Times to criticize Mitt Romney because he is refusing to fund a program that victimizes women physically and emotionally in one of the cruelest ways possible. The condemnation of the UNFPA is not headed by right-wing, anti-women, TEA-party extremists, as the Times and other media sources would like you to believe. Rather, the evidence is supported by congressional investigations, the State Department, eyewitness testimony, and expert investigative research agencies like the Population Research Institute. I ask you, fellow Americans, to judge whether the current administration should really be applauded for funding the horrific abuse of women and children.
