No U.S. tax dollars should go toward abortion, period

Date published: 8/10/2004

This is a response to Rick Mercier's July 29 op-ed ["UNFPA is a necessary agency that all Americans should support"], in which he complains about the Bush administration's determination that UNFPA's support for the coercive Chinese forced-abortion and involuntary sterilization program makes it ineligible for U.S. population control funding.

Bush did the right thing on UNFPA, but Mercier and many others, even, unfortunately, many self-proclaimed pro-lifers, are missing, or ignoring, the fact that Bush himself requested $425 million for USAID population control programs for fiscal year 2004. That's a lot more tax money than the $34 million he withheld from UNFPA this year, and it is the same amount appropriated to USAID during the last year Clinton was in office.

USAID population control programs promote intrinsically evil contraception. In addition, many of these so-called contraceptives act, sometimes, as abortifacients by preventing the implantation of human embryos in their mothers' wombs, thus killing 5- to 7-day-old pre-born human beings. Since 1965, USAID has obligated over $6.6 billion for such international population control.

The Freedom of Conscience Act of 2003 (H.R. 1548) aims to stop this abuse of our federal tax dollars. Introduced on April 2, 2003, by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), H.R. 1548 states simply, "No Federal official may expend any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity (including any abortion procedure), irrespective of whether such program or activity is foreign or domestic."

Please contact your federal representatives to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 1548 today.

Ed Szymkowiak

Stafford

Ed Szymkowiak is national director of STOPP International, a project of American Life League Inc.

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Date published: 8/10/2004