At the 1984 Mexico City Conference the Reagan Administration established the requirement that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provide “concrete assurances that (it) is not engaged in, or does not provide funding for, abortions or coercive family planning programs.” Concern was highest over UNFPA’s activities in China’s coercive family planning practices. At the time the Administration reportedly held up $19 million (of $38 million allocated for UNFPA for FY1984) until assurances could be provided it was not going to these nefarious practices.
Congress enacted the Kemp-Kasten Amendment in 1985 that left it up to the President to determine if an organization or program being funded by UNFPA contributes to coercive abortions or forced sterilizations. From 1986 through 1993 both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush concluded that the UNFPA was involved in those nefarious practices and thus denied U.S taxpayer funds. President George H.W. Bush even vetoed the 1989 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill because the Democratic Congress was insisting the U.S. contribute to the UNFPA.
It was not until 1993 that President Clinton, despite massive evidence to the contrary, decided it was okay to fund the UNFPA despite its involvement with coercive abortions and forced sterilizations. Under the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. withheld funds for the UNFPA from America’s annual contributions to the United Nations due to UNFPA’s complicity in China’s one-child policy enforced through coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization, but the Obama administration and the 111th Congress resumed contributions to UNFPA.
Numerous investigations, both private and Congressional, have found that China continues to this day its practice of age requirements for pregnancy; “birth permits”; mandatory use of IUDs; mandatory sterilization; crippling fines for non-compliance; imprisonment for non-compliance; forced abortion and forced sterilization. Just last year Feng Jianmei was dragged from her home, beaten, and forced to abort her seven month old unborn child, because it was her second pregnancy. According to China’s one-child policy, couples living in rural areas may have a second child only if their first is a girl. And those in urban areas are strictly restricted to one child. Anyone found breaking this law is fined up to $25,000, or forced to comply as in the case of Feng Jianmei.
The Chinese government continues to kill 13 million infants annually through their policies – With the assistance of UNFPA and American taxpayers. China’s unborn children who are tested and found to be female are at special risk. Nor is this heinous policy limited to the unborn. Female infanticide is routine in rural China.
There have been recent stories that China has “let up” on their one-child policies. Reggie Littlejohn, president of Womens Rights Without Frontiers, has gone to China to expose this lie and she got an assist from an unexpected source:
Now a new Xinhua report confirms Chinese officials believe that the “birth policy changes are no big deal.”
Wang Pei’an, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told Xinhua that “the number of couples covered by the new policy is not very large across the country.”
Last week, Littlejohn explained that even if all couples were allowed two children, there is no guarantee that the Chinese Communist Party “will cease their appalling methods of enforcement.”
“Regardless of the number of children allowed, women who get pregnant without permission will still be dragged out of their homes, strapped down to tables and forced to abort babies that they want, even up to the ninth month of pregnancy. It does not matter whether you are pro-life or pro-choice on this issue,” she said. “No one supports forced abortion, because it is not a choice.”
She said instituting a two-child policy also will not end the Chinese government’s “gendercide” in which girls are selectively aborted because of the cultural value of having a boy to maintain the family name.
“Indeed, areas in which two children currently are allowed are especially vulnerable to gendercide, the sex-selective abortion of females,” she said.
Littlejohn cited a 2009 British Medical Journal study of 2005 national census data showing that in nine provinces, for “second order births” where the first child is a girl, 160 boys were born for every 100 girls.
Hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds have been allocated for UNFPA despite their participation in China’s brutal policy. Cutting off funding to UNFPA will save money, but more importantly it will save lives by discontinuing U.S. taxpayer support for UNFPA.
For more information please visit Womens Rights Without Frontiers.
ironically named