U.S. funding of the United Nations Population Fund for this year fell victim last week to an odd but ultimately lethal coalition of opponents. Given that the fund's work is entirely to the benefit of women and children of the world living in the most difficult circumstances, the Bush administration's craven cave-in to the program's opponents was shameful and should be reversed.
The fund, referred to as UNFPA, has worked since 1969 with the poorest women and children in some 142 countries of the world, supporting maternal and child health care, voluntary family planning, screening for reproductive tract cancers, promoting breast-feeding and preventing HIV/AIDS.
The Clinton administration provided it $21 million its last year. The Bush administration's budget proposal for UNFPA for this year was $25 million. Congress appropriated $34 million, which would have constituted 13 percent of UNFPA's $270 million budget this year.
Then opponents led by Republican Reps. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey and Henry Hyde of Illinois cornered and killed the UNFPA fox.
Although UNFPA categorically does not advocate or fund abortions, the words "maternal health" and "voluntary family planning" in any program are red flags to anti-abortion groups. The leader of the opposition on that front was Human Life International, a Virginia-based group founded by the Rev. Paul Marx, a Benedictine priest.
Opponents such as the Population Research Institute, also based in rural Virginia, focused on UNFPA's program in China, drawing on opposition to improved U.S. relations with that country. The Chinese government admittedly has sometimes advocated coercive abortion and sterilization. But U.S., British and U.N. inspections of UNFPA programs in China have consistently verified UNFPA's strict adherence to a position of opposing those Chinese policies.
Another piece of the campaign to kill U.S. funding of UNFPA turned on the fact that its executive director is Dr. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the first Saudi Arabian national to head a U.N. agency.
Dr. Obaid holds a Ph.D. from Wayne State University. She distinguished herself by accepting -- as a Muslim woman -- an assignment from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to go to Afghanistan in the days of the Taliban to lecture them about their mistreatment of women. Her position and her style somehow managed to offend the American opponents of UNFPA.
Apparently taking stock of the strength of anti-abortion, anti-China, anti-Arab and anti-U.N. elements, the Bush administration reneged on its own proposal to contribute this year to UNFPA's humanitarian programs. Another likely factor was the importance of these and other groups in the Republican Party's fund raising for the fall election.
UNFPA programs worldwide are very much worthy of American support. Canceling the important U.S. contribution to them was a cheap political act that should be reversed on an urgent basis.
E-mail this story 
