Just two weeks after the the House and Senate approved legislation to de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business, Republican leaders in Congress took the next step to help get American taxpayers out of the abortion industry. They added language to the FY 2016 budget bill that would yank another 7% in funding away from the UNFPA, which promotes abortions worldwide.
The House is expected to approve the Senate-passed bill to de-fund Planned Parenthood in January and it will send that measure to pro-abortion President Barack Obama. The budget, which cuts UNFPA funding by 7%, will head to Obama even sooner.
The current level of UNFPA funding is approximately $35 million and Congressional Republicans ensured that amount sent to the pro-abortion agency would decline.
“The bill maintains important pro-life provisions, including the Hyde Amendment, and prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion. It also includes a ban on FDA approval for genetically modifying human embryos and cuts funding for a program involved in abortion-related activities, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), by 7 percent,” Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said.
Ryan said Republicans “are maintaining all of our pro-life protections, including the Hyde amendments; and we are making cuts to the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) program.”
In March 2009, just months after Obama took office, the Obama administration sent a $50 million check to the United Nations Population Fund. That’s the pro-abortion group that has been accused of supporting and working in concert with Chinese family planning officials.
There, the Chinese population control program has relied on forced abortions, involuntary sterilizations and other human rights abuses to enforce its rule that most couples may have no more than one child.
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The Bush administration had withheld the funds because of the UNFPA-China population control program ties, but Obama signed a bill reversing those limits and pro-life advocates failed to get the Senate to put them back in place.
“Yesterday, for the first time in eight years, the State Department released $50 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization linked to China’s one-child policy and coerced abortions,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said at the time.
“Gallup found that an overwhelming majority of Americans object to paying for Obama’s new export–overseas abortion. He may not be able to stop AIG from exploiting taxpayers, but the President can certainly keep his party from giving family planning’ groups a raise,” he said.
Obama demonstrated his commitment to funding the controversial pro-abortion UN agency when he overturned the Mexico City Policy during his first week in office.
“I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund,” Obama said in his executive order message in January.
“By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries,” he added.
However, President Obama ignored the connection between the UNFPA and the Chinese forced-abortion program.
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 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.”
In fact, PRI’s investigation discovered that the UNFPA shared an office with the very Chinese family planning officials who were carrying out forced abortions.
