“Neither UNFPA nor any other UN agency provides abortions. Full stop,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) adamantly stated at a recent congressional hearing on United Nations reform while holding up contents of a UNFPA “birth kit.”
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Dean’s comments were categorically false.
UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) otherwise known as the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency does in fact provide and promote abortion, including in humanitarian situations where women lack access to basic hygiene, let alone life-saving treatments in cases of complications from abortion. It does so even in contexts where forced abortion is a concern because of ethnic and religious tensions.
Other UN agencies also aggressively promote abortion and partner with the global abortion industry. There is abundant proof of this.
UNFPA’s website lists abortion drugs and devices alongside the maternal health kits that Representative Dean waved vigorously in the congressional hearing. Even if labelled for the “management of abortion complications” they are de facto abortion kits and there is ample evidence that they are being used for induced abortions and not just miscarriages. The highly specialized abortion advocacy group Ipas described partnering with UNFPA to train abortion providers and ensuring access to abortion by way of a legal loophole in Bangladesh in an article in the journal Global Public Health. Ipas is transparent about working through and “in partnership” with UNFPA to provide abortion on its own website.
This is why alternating Republican and Democratic administrations have always interpreted using U.S. taxpayer funds for UNFPA kits as a violation of the Helms Amendment. Federal law prohibits using U.S. funds to promote or perform abortion, including coercing anyone to do so. UNFPA’s work is likely in violation of other federal restrictions on abortion-related activity.
A recent UNFPA publication emphasized repeatedly that while the agency respects national abortion laws, “[i]n all cases and everywhere, UNFPA opposes criminalization of abortion.” In other words, UNFPA supports abortion-on-demand. This kind of double-speak is typical of the agency. Its actions and interference in domestic legislative and judicial processes leave little ambiguity. Nor is the fact that this is a violation of the Siljander Amendment, a federal law that prohibits lobbying for or against abortion with U.S. funds.
Citing the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO), UNFPA promotes abortion as an international right and undermines conscience rights for medical health professionals. A widely-used UN produced by several UN agencies refers to abortion as a humanitarian right and calls on humanitarian operators to provide abortion. It even states that medical personnel in humanitarian situations must refer women for abortions against their consciences. This is a violation of the Helms Amendment, and also a gross misrepresentation of international humanitarian law
The Trump administration withheld funds from the UN agency under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment in May last year because of the agency’s historic ties to coercive family planning programs in China. But UNFPA has a sordid history of partnering with coercive population control programs beyond China that remains largely ignored, including recent examples.
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Following UNFPA’s presence on the ground in Bangladesh throughout the recent Rohingya refugee crisis, there were widespread reports of coercion in family planning against Rohingya Muslim women. Similar concerns exist in Nigeria, where UNFPA had extensive involvement following the Boko Haram kidnappings, where girls were released and then allegedly subjected to forced abortion.
Contrary to what Rep. Dean said, UNFPA’s programs actually show a preference for preventing births, not making them safe. It is part of a pattern of disregard for women and their choices.
These abuses are not limited to one UN agency. The entire UN bureaucracy has been manipulated to promote abortion and other controversial social policies. Democrats, allied with European and Nordic countries, use the UN system as an official front to launder population control policies, abortion, and gender ideology. The time is ripe for the U.S. Government to do something about it.
In recent years, UN social engineering goals have expanded to promoting gender ideology and DEI, including giving children access to sexualized content behind parents’ backs and promoting access to transgender sex-rejecting procedures without parental consent as part of an integrated approach to “sexual and reproductive health and rights.” These developments merit analysis through the expanded Mexico City Policy, the federal abortion restrictions on foreign aid.
If Congress is really serious about real reforms, it should enforce all pro-life federal restrictions equally on all UN agencies and investigate UN agencies to ensure that they are truly protecting women from coercive family planning.
Stefano Gennarini is the Vice President for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) a research institute dedicated to protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person at the UN. Rebecca Oas is C-Fam’s Director of Research.
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Image: UNFPA