Pro-lifers force US to slash Third World aid

[afro-elf]

Pro-lifers force US to slash Third World aid

The Bush files - Observer special

Ed Helmore in New York
Sunday June 30, 2002
The Observer

International efforts to control population growth in the developing world could be fatally undermined following a decision by President Bush to slash millions of dollars of funding for a UN family planning programme.
The move to end US contributions to the UN's population fund, and other aid programmes that provide assistance to women and children, will be announced early next month, according to administration officials quoted in yesterday's Washington Post. The move comes after intense pressure from anti-abortion groups and religious fundamentalists, who are opposed to the UN's efforts.

The decision is likely to cause a storm of protest, and critics will cite it as yet another example of the Bush administration disregarding America's global responsibility in order to satisfy domestic lobbying interests.

Anti-abortion groups have long claimed that US support of international family planning and education programmes is tantamount to promoting abortion and involuntary sterilisation.

In January, Bush withheld $34 million in payments to the UN's population fund after conservatives accused the UN of tacitly supporting China's 'one child per family' abortion policy. Next month's announcement will make this permanent.

UN officials have long denied that its population programmes support forced abortions or sterilisation.

Yesterday, international aid organisers warned that although the UN programme would probably survive without US backing, America's decision could seriously undermine its capacity to prevent 800,000 abortions and the deaths of 4,700 women and 77,000 children under the age of five.

Family planning groups say that by falsely identifying the UN's work in China as supportive of the country's abusive reproductive policies, anti-abortion activists are now threatening a far larger global programme that not only seeks to help women on family planning but also promotes HIV and Aids prevention, health and education in more than 140 countries.

Susan Cohen, director of government affairs for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, told the Washington Post that the most vulnerable of the world's poorest countries would be the first to suffer.

'It's the women in 142 developing countries, including Afghanistan, which the White House purports to care about so much, who are going to suffer as a result of $34m less going to prevent maternal death, infant death and abortions,' Cohen said.

Anti-abortion groups have welcomed the decision. Deal Hudson, of the Catholic magazine Crisis, said: 'It sends the message to the UN community that the administration is not going to be party to its ideological approach.'

US conservative anti-family planning groups have consistently sought to hitch US support for the UN and international aid agencies to their agenda and the latest move marks an escalation of that effort. Promoters of the UN programme say they have misrepresented the population fund's work in China in order to force a cut in funding. To clear up the issue, the Bush administration sent a delegation to China to look into its birth-control practices. However, the findings have yet to be released.

Last month, the US came close to boycotting a UN summit to advance the health, education and safety of children in developing countries after groups from the religious right labelled the conference's call for 'reproductive health services' as a covert endorsement of abortion.

Yesterday, senior Democrats warned of a serious legislative fight if Bush cuts payments to the UN's population fund. Democratic Senate leader Thomas Daschle said: 'We believe strongly that the programmes work, that they merit US support and that we should not be so dictatorial as to tell the UN not to do that.'

The move to cut funds also represents a marked change in the administration's prior policy to back the UN programme and sends a message that support from the US, which enjoyed an upsurge in the wake of 11 September, is waning again. Until the terrorist attacks, conservative lawmakers in Washington had blocked $1.9 billion in payments to the UN on the grounds that it might be used to promote advice on abortion. In retaliation, the US lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.