White House blocks funds linked to China’s coercive abortions

By Tom Strode - Sep 30, 2005

The Bush administration has refused for the fourth consecutive year to provide money to a controversial United Nations family planning fund linked to China’s coercive population control program.

The State Department announced it would withhold this year $34 million designated by Congress for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). As it has each year since 2002, the department determined contributions to the organization would violate the 1985 Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits family planning money from going to any entity that, as determined by the President, “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

Officials in many parts of China have practiced a forced population control program for about 25 years in an attempt to curb the birth rate in the world’s most populous country. A law codifying the policy throughout China went into effect in 2002.

The policy limits couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. Other exceptions have been made in some provinces, and the enforcement of the policy has varied among provinces. The program has been marked by coercive sterilization and abortion, but infanticide, especially of females, also has been reported.

The UNFPA has denied charges it supports coercive programs, but a State Department investigative team in 2002 reported the UNFPA provided computers and vehicles to Chinese population-control offices, a State Department spokesman said at the time. That team did not recommend withholding the funds, however.

Since 2002, “we have continuously called on China to end its program of coercive abortion,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a written statement Sept. 17. “We have also repeatedly urged China and the U.N. Population Fund to restructure the organization’s programs in a way that would allow the United States to provide funding. . . . since no key changes have taken place, these restrictions are being applied again.”

“Our president and our country are standing with the oppressed by refusing to cooperate with their oppressor,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J., in a written statement. “The international community should be appalled that UNFPA spends more time and energy demonizing the U.S. for providing funding to other organizations than it does in criticizing the murderous Chinese population control program.”

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