No Funding for Reproductive Health...Again

Over at his blog, On the Ground, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is incensed that the Bush administration has, for the seventh consecutive year, decided to withhold any funding for the United Nations Population Fund. Why would the U.S. object to helping fund an organization that provides reproductive health services for women across the world (not to mention assistance in development, human rights, and gender equality initiatives as well)? Kristof explains:

The reason given for withholding the U.S. funds is that the Population Fund (universally called UNFPA, after its old acronym) supports forced abortions in China. Even if that were true, it would be ridiculous to withhold funds for UNFPA activities against maternal mortality in Africa because of its work in China. But in any case, UNFPA has been a major force against compulsion of any kind in China, as the U.S. blue-ribbon committee that investigated the charges found. In the areas in China where UNFPA set up a model program, there is no compulsion and the abortion rate is lower than in the U.S.

It seems that the administration is assuming that, simply because China has a one-child policy -- and because yes, like everywhere else in the world, some women in China do get abortions -- that abortions there must be non-voluntary, and that the UNFPA, merely by operating in the country, is guilty by association. This logic is clearly flawed, its assertions are wholly unsubstantiated by the evidence, and, perhaps worst of all, it contradicts the findings of the U.S. government's own investigative panel. Moreover, as Kristof suggests, depriving UNFPA of support for any of its work -- even in places like Africa, where President Bush has trumpeted his development efforts, such as PEPFAR, as a staple of his legacy -- out of either political or ideological posturing makes for nonsensical policy.

Kristof isn't the only one who's upset about the administration's seven-year boycott of UNFPA. Voices on the Hill are already registering their outcry, and, judging from the ideas of many On Day One users, this decision is not likely to be popular here either.

Let's hope the next president takes notice.

UPDATE: Tamara Kreinin, the Executive Director of the Women and Population
program at the United Nations Foundation, has issued a strong statement on UNFPA
funding. On the blogosphere, Craig Lasher at RH Reality Check has this to say.