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Bush Administration Set to Refuse Funds to Pro-Abortion UNFPA Again

Evidence of China's on-going coercive abortion policies determine decision

WASHINGTON, December 16, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Bush Administration is set to once again deny an allotted $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). That message came loud and clear Tuesday as Arthur Dewey, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for the bureau of population, refugees, and migration made a presentation to the House International Relations Committee.

Investigations conducted by the U.S. Department of State find that China is still using coercion to enforce its "one-child" per couple policy, said Dewey. The evidence, he told the Committee, "clearly showed us that the large fees and penalties for out-of-plan births assessed in implementing China's regulations are tantamount to coercion that leads to abortion."

Dewey reiterated the Bush administration's stand that "strongly and absolutely" opposes the practice of coercive abortions and sterilizations wherever they occur.

According to the State Department official, China's coercive population practices have been -- and remain -- sufficient to trigger the Kemp-Kasten prohibition of U.S. funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

"UNFPA support of, and participation in, China's population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion, thus triggering the Kemp-Kasten prohibition on support to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization," he said. The result has been that the United States has not funded UNFPA during the past three years.

Since 2002, however, the United States has had continuous discussions with Chinese authorities that have laid out the U.S. stance based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1994 Cairo Declaration on Population and Development that there should be no coercion -- in any form -- in any nation's population policies, Dewey said.

While there has been "measurable progress in these negotiations," China's policies have not changed sufficiently to permit the Bush administration to resume UNFPA funding, Dewey said.

"China's birth planning law and policies retain harshly coercive elements in law and practice," he said. "Forced abortion and sterilization are egregious violations of human rights, and should be of concern to the global human rights community, as well as to the Chinese themselves. Unfortunately, we have not seen willingness in other parts of the international community to stand with us on these human rights issues."

Dewey told the committee that the Bush administration will continue to seek engagement with the Chinese authorities and urge China to move to a human rights-based approach to population issues.

See the transcript of Dewey's remarks:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/dec/041216a.html

jhw

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