Pro-Abortion United Nations Agency Excited Obama Plans to Restore Funding
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 27, 2009
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) — The controversial pro-abortion United Nations agency that has been proven to support and be involved in the forced abortion population control regime in China is applauding the news that President Barack Obama will likely restore the $40 million annual funding President Bush revoked.
Last week, the president rescinded the Mexico City Policy, allowing over $450 million in federal tax money to go to groups that promote or perform abortions overseas.
In an announcement accompanying the move, Obama pledged to restore funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as well.
In response, UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid said, "The President’s actions send a strong message about his leadership and his desire to support causes that will promote peace and dignity, equality for women and girls, and economic development in the poorest regions of the world."
"And access to reproductive health is at the core of all of these issues," Obaid said.
"If a woman cannot make decision about her own fertility, then she cannot make decisions about anything else," Thoraya said.
However, the biggest proponent of women not being able to make their own decisions about having children could be the UNFPA because of the connection it has with the Chinese forced-abortion program.
President Bush cut UNFPA funding because a State Department investigation found the agency was working hand-in-hand with Chinese officials who instituted its one-child population control policy. The Chinese policy prohibits couples from having more than one child and violators are punished with forced abortions, sterilizations, and are subjected to numerous human rights abuses.
Following the governmental investigation, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had no doubt that the UNFPA was complicit in the population control program.
"I determined that UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s population-planning activities allowed the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion," he wrote.
The State Department investigation came after a groundbreaking probe led by the Population Research Institute.
Colin Mason, PRI’s media director, confirmed to LifeNews.com last November that it stands by its probe showing the UNFPA involved in the program.
"Our investigation remains valid," Mason said. "We put boots on the ground, and made the results available to anyone who wanted them. Those who would disregard our findings show an appalling lack of respect for human rights."
PRI’s initial report, entitled "UNFPA, China, and Coercive Family Planning," is based on an investigation conducted by PRI researchers in China’s Sihui County.
Relying on interviews with over two dozen victims and witnesses, the 2001 investigation found that coercive abortion and sterilization practices were taking place where the UNFPA had supposedly instituted a "client-centered and voluntary family planning program."
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