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tired
- Verse: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. -Romans 1:16-17
FRONT ROYAL, Va., Sept. 20 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Instead of praising the Bush Administration for its continued refusal to fund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), feminist and family planning organizations are denouncing last week's decision. By promoting family planning in mainland China and working with the Chinese government's population control apparatus, UNFPA effectively supports and subsidizes China's coercive population control program. Anyone who believes UNFPA's claim that its participation has moderated China's brutal policies need only read the article "Enemies of the State?" in the Sep. 19, 2005 edition of Time, which details "what appears to be one of the most brutal mass sterilization and abortion campaigns in years." Officials in Linyi, Shandong Province began a campaign in March of this year that included forced abortions and sterilizations of Chinese women so that local officials could meet their birth limitation goals.
Communist China's massive, systematic, and official restriction of women's reproductive freedom has drawn little interest from feminist and family planning groups and officials, some of whom have even praised the coercive program. In China, women are typically allowed to have only one or two children, depending on certain circumstances, before facing severe penalties. The rights of women, and those of their husbands, in this nation of 1.3 billion people are unimportant to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), and Population Action International (PAI), who are among the organizations denouncing the administration's decision. Now, $25 million of the $34 million in funding Congress appropriated for UNFPA will be redirected by the Bush Administration to children's health programs due to UNFPA's support for China's coercive system, and the rest will not be spent. A provision of law called Kemp-Kasten authorizes the administration to withhold funding from groups that support coercive population control programs.
"UNFPA is guilty of shamelessly supporting and whitewashing terrible crimes against humanity, and the United States will have no part in subsidizing them. . .," said Rep. Chris Smith (R.-N.J.) in response to the decision. "If only UNFPA would lobby the Chinese government to prohibit forced abortion as aggressively as they lobby the United States to overturn the law against coercion, there would be less suffering in China right now. 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."
"For the fourth year in a row, the Bush Administration made the right decision in withholding money from the UNFPA," said Joseph A. D'Agostino, Vice President for Communications at PRI. "China's inhumane population control policies have been ongoing for 25 years, as we among others have documented, and the government officially plans to continue them 'for a long time.' By supporting China's population control program, UNFPA, Planned Parenthood, and other such organizations prove they do not value what they call a woman's right to choose. They support only the right to abortion and birth control, and care nothing for Chinese women who wish to give life by bearing children."
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