President Donald Trump just displayed his commitment to the pro-life agenda and his wariness of the United Nations in one fell swoop by defunding the United Nations Family Planning Agency, according to Bloomberg.
Also known as the U.N. Population Fund, the organization is alleged to have been supporting the population-control efforts of the communist Chinese government, and the Trump administration announced Monday that it was redirecting some $32.5 million away from it.
The move was initiated by the State Department, which after a review found that the fund “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
Funding for such organizations was specifically prohibited by the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which passed more than 30 years ago in response to China’s “one child policy,” which has since been slightly relaxed to allow for two children, although forced abortions and sterilizations are still thought to be common.
The $32.5 million that would have gone to the UNFPA for the 2017 fiscal year — roughly 7 percent of the agency’s budget — has been redirected to the U.S. Agency for International Development, where it is expected to fund similar family planning and women’s health efforts in other places, minus the coerced abortions.
As could be expected, many abortion-supporting liberals are upset by the decision, as is the U.N. agency directly affected, with the UNFPA saying in a statement that the claim that it supports forced abortions is “erroneous” and insisting that it works only to promote the “human rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination,” according to NPR.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric complained that the loss of funding “could have devastating effects on the health of vulnerable women and girls and their families around the world.”
However, LifeNews pointed out that this particular agency has been previously defunded by past Republican presidents, only to be re-funded when Democrat presidents take office, much like the pro-life “Mexico City policy” that was reinstated by Trump almost immediately after taking office, a policy which denies federal funds to non-governmental organizations overseas that provide or support abortions.
The decision was heartily cheered by the pro-life Women’s Rights Without Frontiers organization, which has been working in opposition to China’s coerced abortions and sterilizations.
“UNFPA has been found to be complicit with coercive population control in China in the past, and I have no doubt that any unbiased investigation would find them complicit again,” stated WRWF president Reggie Littlejohn. “I have long advocated for the defunding of UNFPA.”
“I believe that any independent, unbiased investigation into UNFPA’s activities in China will lead to the inescapable conclusion that they are complicit with China’s population control practices, which include forced abortion and involuntary sterilization,” she added. “To the extent that the global community is funding the UNFPA, the blood of Chinese women and babies is on our hands.”
This is a big win for the pro-life movement and is another step toward the goal of completely defunding all abortion-related programs that receive federal taxpayer dollars. Here’s looking at you next, Planned Parenthood.
(via: Conservative Tribune)
