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International Planned Parenthood Federation,
July 16, 2004 President George Bush has put election-year politics ahead of helping the world’s most vulnerable women. Relying on a discredited claim that UNFPA supports forced sterilization and abortion in China, the Administration has once again refused to release to the agency $34 million appropriated by Congress. In 2002, a hand-picked Administration fact-finding team found “no evidence that UNFPA has supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion." In fact, UNFPA was found to help reduce such practices in China. But in 2004, re-election comes before reason. “We are profoundly disappointed that President Bush has decided to put pandering to his conservative ‘base’ before the thousands of lives that could be saved in some of the world’s poorest countries by access to family-planning services,” said Carmen Barroso, director of International Planned Parenthood’s Western Hemisphere Region. “This demonstrates once again the isolation of the United States in confronting the global crisis in women’s health, compounding the intense and fully deserved criticism of its abstinence-only approach to AIDS prevention that it recently received at the International AIDS conference in Bangkok.” Adding insult to injury, the Administration has reneged on an earlier promise to reallocate money withheld from UNFPA to other international family planning programs. Instead, the President intends instead to add money to his anti-sex-trafficking campaign. While anti-trafficking is a worthy cause, money for this does nothing for the millions of women who need basic reproductive health care and the means to control their child bearing. UNFPA estimates that the $34 million it has lost could prevent up to 2 million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions and 4,700 maternal deaths, as well as 77,000 infant and child deaths. “In denying UNFPA this life-giving support, the Bush Administration has betrayed the ‘firm commitment to women's reproductive health’ it restated today,” said Jodi Jacobson, director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). “The President admits that he took money from the UNFPA to fund his own, pre-determined priorities. The Administration has thus defied the will of Congress and has failed to listen to the priorities of the American people. Ironically, the consequence will be more, rather than fewer, abortions and women’s deaths.” On June 13, CHANGE and IPPF/WHR led a campaign
that produced thousands of telephone calls
to the White House in support of UNFPA funding.
Co-sponsors included over forty women's rights,
reproductive health, environmental, religious,
and HIV/AIDS organizations based in the United
States and internationally. For a complete
list of organizations please go to http://www.freechoicesaveslives.org/ippfwhr/unfpa_supporters.html.
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