January 31, 2003K
Volume 6, Number 6

Pro-Abortion Democrats Block Aid to Women in Afghanistan

Supporters of UNFPA on Capitol Hill have refused to concede defeat, and are now hoping to restore 2002 funding and establish 2003 funding for the troubled UN population-control agency, even if it means rewriting US law and precipitating a federal budget crisis in the process.

Michael Schwartz, vice president for government relations for Concerned Women for America and a veteran Washington lobbyist, told the Friday Fax that “I don’t think there is any single issue more contentious than UNFPA funding in the entire appropriations process. The question of UNFPA may make it impossible to agree on an Omnibus appropriations bill for the remainder of 2003.”

In a decision that has been widely reported, the Bush administration declined to release $34 million dollars earmarked for UNFPA in the 2002 federal budget after a US investigation determined that UNFPA continued to support forced abortions in China. The administration then transferred the money to the Child Survival and Health Programs Fund of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). On January 16, USAID informed Congress that it intended to use the money on programs to improve the health of children and mothers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, congressional Democrats blocked this initiative, hoping to keep open the possibility of shifting the money back to UNFPA.

This move was made in conjunction with Democratic strategies concerning the US federal budget for 2003. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced an amendment intended to undermine a US law, called the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, that prohibits US funding for any “organization or program that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The goal, it seems, would be to render UNFPA eligible for US support regardless of its involvement in coercion. According to Schwartz, such maneuvering is a “tacit admission,” at least, “that it would currently be illegal to give UNFPA even one cent, and Leahy knows it.”

When this initial attempt failed, Leahy introduced another amendment into the 2003 budget, one that would allocate $35 million for UNFPA for 2003 and retroactively grant UNFPA the original $34 million from 2002, if the State Department certified that UNFPA had ended its involvement in coercive Chinese population-control programs.

Schwartz believes that it will prove extremely difficult to resolve this issue, and time is running out for this budget cycle. “We have burned up four months of this fiscal year fighting over UNFPA, and we only have until the end of next week to resolve all of the differences in the budget.” He is doubtful that UNFPA supporters will back down, stating that “the politicians intent on imposing coercive population control programs on the developing world are so fanatical that they would appear to be willing to shut down the entire US federal government rather than insist that UNFPA respects human rights.”

Copyright – C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute). Permission granted for unlimited use. Credit required.

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