Avalanche of Editorials Back US Funding for UNFPA

UNFPA web site LATEST MEDIA COVERAGE Letters in favor of UNFPA funding Editorial Board Memo For more information: Sarah Craven, U.S. Committee for UNFPA FACTS: U.S. Contributions to UNFPA 1965-2001 UNFPA and China Potential Impact of Increased Funding on Women and Families Overseas Family Planning Funding 2001: USAID programs

Jan 25 – Editorials from across the United States are coming out universally against the Bush Administration’s decision to temporarily freeze and possibly cut-off the Congressionally approved $34 million in funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). For additional background on the UNFPA funding controversy, click here.

From Tulsa and Trenton to Seattle and St. Petersburg, editorial writers are urging the President to uphold the carefully-crafted, bipartisan compromise reached by Congress to fund the world’s most important multilateral family planning effort at a level of $34 million.

The old political adage asks: “How’s it playing in Peoria?” Not well for the Administration. An editorial in the Peoria Journal Star notes, “support for family planning is humane, life-affirming and very much in the interest of the United States. The decision is easy: Release the money. Move on.” It also explains that Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) can’t tell the difference between contraception and abortion and that the theory about why the US should not fund UNFPA is “specious” and uses “twisted logic.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that, “If the Bush administration is truly antiabortion, it will not block the U.S. appropriation to the United Nations' family planning program. When family planning funds are denied, abortions are likely to increase.”

The Seattle Times notes the apparent contradiction between the Administration’s advocacy of women’s rights in Afghanistan on the one hand and the withholding of funds to help save women’s lives around the world on the other. “First Lady Laura Bush and others in the administration have talked about the deplorable conditions under which Afghan women live. They note, correctly, that an important victory in America’s war on terrorism will be the chance for women to assert greater control over their own lives. But when it comes to overseas family planning, which also helps women gain control of their lives, politics has eclipsed the White House’s fair-mindedness.”

The Tulsa World explores the weak foundations of the Administrations deliberations, writing that “a handful of conservative members of Congress has asked Bush to withhold the money because the U.N. Population Fund operates programs in China, where the regime's one-child policy is brutally enforced, including coerced abortions in some provinces. However, even in China, the fund has elicited an agreement that the one-child policy will not be enforced in countries where its programs operate.

Voluntary, education-based family planning actually can reduce the brutish excesses of the one-child policy in China, just as it can reduce abortions in other poor countries by helping to make sure that every child is a wanted child.”

The Times in Trenton bemoans that “our own” Rep. Smith is leading the effort on what it describes as a “deeply misguided crusade.” It notes “President Bush himself has requested (in 2001) $25 million for UNFPA. The House approved that sum, but the Senate raised the amount to $39 million, and conferees agreed on $34 million.”

The Houston Chronicle calls the idea of withholding funds to UNFPA “…another misguided case of the American abortion debate being wrongly inserted into the fray. As the Population Fund points out, it does not provide support for abortion services or promote abortion anywhere in the world. In fact, family planning prevents abortion by making each child a wanted child.” The St. Petersburg Times reaffirms that point in stating “Antiabortion forces who can't seem to see that family planning services benefit their own cause should not be allowed to derail the U.S. commitment to this important program.”

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