This week, the U.S. House State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Subcommittee approved a 2009 funding bill that will undermine the Kemp-Kasten provision—the provision that allows the President to withhold funds from any organization that “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
It is under the Kemp-Kasten provision that Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush have withheld funds from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. This ability to withhold funds is significant, as comments by UNFPA officials themselves indicate the group’s deep-seeded support of abortion and China’s one-child policy. Take these comments, for example:
“China has had the most successful family planning policy in the history of mankind in terms of quantity and with that, China has done mankind a favour.” –Agence France-Presse, October 11, 1999.
“I have had the honor of being associated with China’s reproductive health and family planning program for more than two decades.” –Nafis Sadik, former UNFPA Executive Director, January 12, 2002.
“… I also feel proud that UNFPA made the wise decision to resist external pressures and continued its fruitful cooperation with China.” – Nafis Sadik
A favor to mankind? An honor? Something in which to take pride? Not according to the Chinese women forced into abortion because of China’s heinous population control policies. And definitely not to the children aborted.
Unfortunately, an amendment to the funding bill offered by Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) creates a special exception to Kemp-Kasten that will allow UNFPA to receive 60 million dollars, despite Kemp-Kasten. An amendment by Representative Dave Weldon deleting this loophole was rejected.
Representative Weldon had the following reaction:
“For years we have sought to protect women and children in China because it was morally wrong to support China’s forced abortion program. Now the Democrat Majority in the House has voted to change existing law and send millions of dollars to UNFPA and turn a blind eye to the egregious human rights violations that UNFPA promotes in China. This is a despicable policy change.”
