Catholic Culture : Catholic World News Feature Stories : White House refuses funding for UN population agency

Catholic World News (CWN)
Feature Stories

White House refuses funding for UN population agency (Subscribe to RSS Feed)

Washington, Jul. 4, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The US government has chosen to withhold funding from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) for the 7th consecutive year.

The White House is withholding almost $40 million in funding from the UN agency on the basis of the Kemp-Kasten amendment of 1985, which forbids the use of US tax dollars to support to programs of forced abortion.

The Population Research Institute (PRI), a Virginia-based group, applauded the Bush Administration decision, noting that the White House denied funding for UNFPA because of research conducted by PRI president Steven Mosher. Studying government family-planning programs in China, Mosher and his colleagues found that the UNFPA was deeply involved in programs of forced abortion and coercive sterilization in that country.

Reacting to PRI's findings, President Bush in 2001 decided to redirect $34 million away from the UNFPA's coercive family-planning programs into child survival programs, anti-trafficking programs, and other programs. The UNFPA's subsequent efforts to cover up its involvement in China, have been to no avail. No US funds have gone to the UNFPA for the past seven years, costing the organization a total of $235 million.

"The evidence demonstrates that the UNFPA continues to aid and abet China's barbaric one-child policy," says PRI's President Steven Mosher. "It doesn't deserve one penny of US money."

Glossary Terms: