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New Effort to Fund UNFPA in Offing
(FNIF) Liberal lawmakers are once again trying to funnel your tax dollars to an organization some say finances forced abortions in China.
The House International Relations Committee will attempt next week to restore funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a group that has been charged with using your tax dollars to promote forced abortion in China.
Sarah Craven, a spokeswoman for the UNFPA, said she is hopeful the United States will restore the funding.
"The U.S. is a leader in population and family planning and . . . is the largest bilateral provider of family planning assistance throughout the world," Craven said. "So we see the U.S. as a leader in this area and we would hope to once again receive their funding and their support."
But Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute said funding UNFPA is a bad idea.
"They've been involved in China's 'one child' policy from the beginning," Mosher said. "This is a policy that involves forced abortion, forced sterilization and forced contraception. It's one that the American people would not want us to be funding and that the Bush administration has made a very wise decision not to fund."
A 2002 letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell to Congress, in fact, said the UNFPA had provided computers and vehicles to the Chinese government to enforce China's family-planning policy. He also said that UNPFA violated a 1985 law banning the United States from giving money to agencies involved in forced abortion or sterilization.
Michael Schwartz, vice president of governmental relations at Concerned Women for America, said the committee vote to restore funding via amendment sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., will be extremely close.
"If Lowey has her way, we'll be faced with another crisis," Schwartz said, "a showdown between Congress and the president on whether the United States should begin to export abortion. We've never done that."
Schwartz said people need to get in touch with their representatives in Congress to let them know they support the Bush administration policy of refusing to fund any organization involved in coerced abortion or sterilization.
© 2004 Focus on the Family
By: Keith Peters
Source: Family News in Focus
Publish Date: June 29, 2004
Online at: http://ifrl.org/IFRLDailyNews/040630/2
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