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January 15, 2001 The Honorable President
George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: On
behalf of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association
(NFPRHA), I am writing to strongly urge you to support the bipartisan agreement
to contribute $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) this
fiscal year. Congress
agreed to and approved a funding level of $34 million for UNFPA after long
negotiations between appropriators, your administration, and the House and
Senate leadership, and just last Thursday you signed the FY 2002 foreign aid
appropriations bill into law. In your
FY 2002 budget request, you included $25 million for UNFPA. As recently as October, your administration
provided $600,000 to UNFPA to support its life-saving work with Afghan women. I understand, however, that
the administration is now considering withholding the U.S. contribution to
UNFPA by invoking the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits funding to any
organization that the President determines “supports or participates in the
management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary
sterilization.” There is no evidence to
support such an allegation against UNFPA.
All UNFPA-supported programs are entirely voluntary, and no credible
source has ever found otherwise. In
fact, an independent fact-finding mission in October of 2001 found that UNFPA’s
program in China is playing a catalytic role in moving the country from an
administrative to a client-centered approach to the provision of reproductive
health services. Clearly, the few
individuals who continue to levy unsubstantiated allegations about UNFPA’s work
in China simply oppose family planning and, therefore, are out-of-step with the
overwhelming majority of Americans who support family planning, including
public funding for family planning services.
UNFPA’s
programs enable women and their families around the world obtain crucial health
services that reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, unintended pregnancy, and
abortion, and save the lives of women and children. Indeed, withholding the FY 02 U.S. contribution to UNFPA would
have a tremendous impact, resulting in an estimated two million unwanted
pregnancies, nearly 800,000 induced abortions, 4700 maternal deaths, nearly
60,000 cases of serious maternal illness, and over 77,000 infant and child
deaths. I urge you support women and
their families around the world by honoring the overwhelming bipartisan
consensus to contribute $34 million to UNFPA this fiscal year. Sincerely, Judith M. DeSarno President and CEO The National
Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), founded in
1971, is a non-profit membership organization established to assure access to
voluntary, comprehensive, and culturally sensitive family planning and
reproductive health services and to support reproductive freedom for all. NFPRHA represents over 4600 clinics that
provide family planning and other reproductive health services to more than 4.5
million women across the U.S. each year.
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