Pro-Life House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has revived the GOP’s YouCut program, which allows Americans to vote upon which spending they would like to see cut by Congress.
In the inaugural Phase II vote, ending funds to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is one of the options. As YouCut says:
Terminate U.S. Contributions to the United Nations Population Fund
Saves $400 million
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan withheld all U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) after determining that UNFPA participated in the support and co-management of China’s population control program. Under the Bush administration, the U.S. withheld funds for the UNFPA from America’s annual contributions to the United Nations due to UNFPA’s complicity in China’s one-child policy enforced through coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization, but the Obama administration and the 111th Congress resumed contributions to UNFPA. HR 1 sought to terminate UNFPA funding, which stood at $55 million in FY 2010. UNFPA funding was cut by $15 million, to $40 million in the final agreement over FY 2011 spending. The President’s 2012 Budget requests $47 million for the program.
In this time of great fiscal crisis in our country, should we really be giving $47 million dollars to support abortions overseas? The UNFPA funding seems straight out of a budget blueprint from Margaret Sanger.
The UNFPA’s mission statement is itself a contradiction:
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
UNFPA – because everyone counts
Does one even need to point out the multiple ironies contained?
As Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a leading advocate for cutting funds to the UNFPA, has made the facts very clear:
“UNFPA is guilty of shamelessly supporting and whitewashing terrible crimes against humanity, and the United States will have no part in subsidizing them….By redirecting this money to groups that work to expand human rights in contrast to UNFPA, the United States provides hope to oppressed women everywhere with the promise that the United States will not subsidize those who engage in forced abortion and other coercive population control programs.”
Be sure to read all of Rep. Smith’s argument.
Please take the time to vote to cut U.S. funding to the UNFPA. It will save tens of thousands of lives around the world each year, and the radical pro-abortion lobby in the U.S. will have its international promotion of abortion crippled.
