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UNFPA is a necessary agency that all Americans should support

Bush spurns reason--and poor women; luckily, some Americans are standing up for what's right

Date published: 7/29/2004

By RICK MERCIER

SOMETIMES it seems that George W. Bush's mission in life is to find ways to make the rest of the world disdain us.

That's why I'm thankful for Americans such as Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham. They're examples we can hold up to the world to show that we haven't all lost our minds--and that we certainly don't all support the ideological agenda of the Christian right.

Two years ago, when Bush decided to withhold an earmarked $34 million contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (known by its acronym, UNFPA), Roberts and Abraham didn't just get mad, they launched a grassroots effort to raise money and rally support for the agency.

So far, they've collected $2 million from more than 100,000 Americans (including about 1,300 Virginians) who understand that UNFPA does invaluable work in protecting women's health and enabling them to plan when, and whether, to give birth.

And that work is important, Roberts says, because "peace and stability will prosper when women are healthy and have the children they want to have."

But UNFPA is being unnecessarily stifled because Bush has now blocked U.S. funding for the agency for three straight fiscal years. The sum lost to the organization over those three years is $93 million--a lot more than what Roberts' and Abraham's 34 Million Friends of UNFPA have raised.

What does that lost funding mean in the real world? According to UNFPA, this year's withheld $34 million could have helped prevent as many as 2 million unwanted pregnancies and nearly 800,000 abortions, as well as 4,700 maternal deaths and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths. The funds could also have been used to improve HIV-prevention efforts.

UNFPA does not provide support for abortions or abortion-related activities, and it affirms the principle that abortion should not be promoted as a method of family planning.

But an obscure extremist group in Front Royal called the Population Research Institute claimed UNFPA was involved in forced abortions and sterilizations in China, and those spurious charges became Bush's justification for making us the first country ever to withhold funds from UNFPA for political reasons.

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Date published: 7/29/2004