July 25, 2002 Statement by Werner Fornos, President of the Population Institute, of withholding U.S. funds from UNFPA:

By running roughshod over the United States Congress's decision to contribute $34 million to UNFPA - the largest multilateral provider of family planning and reproductive health assistance to poor women throughout the world - President Bush reduces his solemn pledge of "compassionate conservatism" to tawdry, campaign sound-bite babble.

 The flimsy allegations brought against UNFPA by a small, disproportionately influential pack of discredited ideological extremists - whose sole purpose is to bash China and scuttle UN population efforts - have been repeatedly exposed as patently preposterous.  After scrutinizing UNFPA activities in China first hand, one investigative team after another has concluded that the UN agency is not part of the problem of force and coercion in China, but rather part of the solution.

Yet President Bush turns his back on the findings of his own State Department, thumbs his nose at the opinion of his own Secretary of State and other leading foreign policy experts who recognize UNFPA's vital services, refuses for nearly a month to release the report of his own handpicked investigative team, and reaches his decision based on whispers in his ear from his political handlers.

The President will try to put this decision behind him as he continues to ignore the afflicted while coddling the comfortable.  But he will be haunted by the 800,000 women who will have induced abortions, by the 4,700 deaths of women from pregnancy and childbirth complications, and the 77,000 child and maternal deaths these funds could have prevented.  His chilling political epitaph will be:  "Bad policy is bad politics."

Short version of Fornos statement of withholding U.S. funds from UNFPA:

By withholding the $34 million Congress appropriated for United Nations family planning and reproductive health assistance, President Bush reduces his "compassionate conservatism" to tawdry, campaign sound-bite babble. 

Allocating the appropriation elsewhere is nothing more than a shell game designed to open abstinence-only clinics without modern contraceptives such as condoms that are vital to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic through Africa and other regions of the developing world.

Moreover, the President is sacrificing even a pretense of moral leadership at the shabby altar of misguided extremist expediency, and ensures that his political epitaph will read: "Bad policy is bad politics."  It is likely to be carved on many political tombstones as early as the November congressional elections.