Chinese whispers: UNFPA's opponents play politics with women's lives.

IN DECEMBER 2001, PRESIDENT George W. Bush froze $34 million that Congress had appropriated for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), because Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey), an ultra-conservative member of congress, and Population Research International (PRI), an extreme antiabortion group, accused the organization of being complicit in forced abortions in China. Seven months later, President Bush denied all US funding to the UNFPA, sparking a fierce battle with women's health advocates.

UNFPA'S opponents portray the issue as being a dispute about abortion in general and specifically forced abortion in China. The UNFPA responded that it does not support abortion services and that cutting off US funding will harm women's health and cost women's lives in 140 countries.

The problem for the Bush administration isn't China--it's family planning in general. White House officials have privately said that conservative activists pressured the administration for months to prove Bush's antiabortion commitment by denying US funding for the UNFPA. Representative Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York) attributed it to the White House's "mindless zeal to take care of their right-wing base." (1)

If the UNFPA were supporting forced abortion or sterilization programs, it would, of course, be right to deny funding. But, according to members of Bush's own administration, there was no evidence that the UNFPA was involved in any coercive programs. In spring 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell sent an investigative team to China to determine if any UN funds were being used to support inhumane population control practices. They found no evidence of UN involvement in coercive abortion or forced sterilization. Furthermore, the US delegation determined that the United Nations is not part of the problem in China's coercive policies; and may well be part of the solution. The State Department's team recommended that the US release the appropriated $34 million to the UNFPA.

This was neither what the White House expected nor wanted to hear. Rather than implement his own fact finders' recommendations, President Bush ignored their findings and denied all US funding for the UNFPA, just as he had planned to do all along. Bush's decision had nothing to do with health policy or human rights violations. It was all about pandering to his ultra-conservative supporters.

The administration eliminated US funding for the UNFPA because, it says, the fund tacitly perpetuates a "one-child" policy in China that has led to abortions and sterilizations against women's will. The administration argued that a 1985 law known as Kemp-Kasten prohibits it from funding groups that allow such practices. However, the UNFPA does not allow such practices. And the administration knew, from its own fact-finding team, that the charges trumped up by Rep. Smith and PRI against the UNFPA'S activities in China lacked any merit. According to the language of the 2002 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, which President Bush signed on January 10, 2002, none of the $34 million made available for UNFPA may be used for programs in the People's Republic of China. To ensure this, the bill goes on to say that US contributions for UNFPA must be kept in a separate account from other accounts and that these monies must not commingle with any other sums. Furthermore, no US funds have supported UNFPA programs in China since 1985.

Every administration makes compromises to satisfy important political constituencies. But most administrations draw the line at compromises that cost lives. Except for the Bush administration, which has appeased antiabortion extremists in Congress on the backs of the poorest, most vulnerable women and children in the world. If historical patterns hold, the UNFPA says that the loss of the US contribution--12 percent of its $270 million budget--will translate into 2 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 more abortions, 4,700 more dead mothers and 77,000 more deaths among children under five.

The opposition to the UN fund represents an administration reversal. In 2001, Bush asked Congress to provide $25 million to the program, and the administration eventually agreed with lawmakers to allot $34 million in the 2002 budget. Secretary of State Colin Powell has publicly praised the program as carrying out "invaluable work." However, abortion opponents lobbied the administration to cut off the money, even though the program does not directly pay for abortions. Bush then reversed himself, his decision based upon nothing more than disproven charges by Population Research Institute, a small, conservative antiabortion group. "What I find so outrageous is that Bush withheld this $34 million based solely on testimony from the Population Research Institute, an arm of a far-right group," said Maloney. "PRI is the only organization that has ever made these allegations. The administration is going against the will of Congress and the international community by allowing a small band of extremists to hamstring its foreign policy." (2)

Despite its innocent name, PRI is indeed extreme. The Virginia-based group, a nonprofit with only six employees, is a spin-off from Human Life International (HLI) the militant antiabortion organization founded by Benedictine priest Paul Marx.

Marx started PRI in 1989 and, according to a 2000 HLI press release, HLI has invested more than $1 million in the group. In 1995, Marx hired Steven Mosher to head PRI.

Mosher was removed from the anthropology program at Stanford University 19 years ago for what the university called "illegal and seriously unethical conduct" that "endangered his research subjects." (3) Mosher was conducting fieldwork in his then-wife's village in southern China, and was accused of bribing local villagers and smuggling coins. Most seriously, he published pictures in a Taiwanese magazine of Chinese women undergoing late-term abortions without concealing their faces, which could have led to government retaliation against the women. (4)

Since then, Mosher has become militantly antiabortion and anti-China. He believes that UN family planning programs are part of a "new world order" conspiracy. Under Mosher, PRI has made a mission out of targeting the UNFPA.

On October 17, 2001, Rep. Smith chaired a House International Relations Committee hearing to investigate claims made by PRI that the UNFPA supports China's policy of coercive abortions. The evidence presented to support these claims came from "an undercover fact finding team" comprised of PRI workers sent to Sihui in Guangdong province, one of the 32 counties where the UNFPA has a presence. The UNFPA only operates in counties where coercive policies have been stopped.

PRI paralegal Josephine Guy, then governmental affairs director for the antiabortion group America 21, led a team to China. (5) The duration of her investigative visit was a mere four days. Hardly a time period that would generate enough evidence to support such a devastating decision by the Bush administration.

Guy flew to Hong Kong in September 2001 and met a British photographer hired to assist her. The next day, she went to mainland China, hired two translators and journeyed to Sihui. Posing as a tourist, Guy said, she interviewed women who fled there to avoid forced abortion, one 19-year-old who was at a clinic for a non-voluntary abortion and another woman who was forcibly sterilized. (6)

Guy told Congress "One woman we interviewed had heroically escaped forced abortion by hiding in a nearby village. As a result, three people in her mother's family and six people in her mother-in-law's family were arrested and thrown into prison." (7) Guy went on to testify that while the relatives of the woman were in jail, the Office of Family Planning sent a crew of officials "armed with jackhammers" to their homes, destroying their homes and belongings. She said the family members were released after four months, but had to pay fines equivalent to three years' wages, about $2,000.

Guy testified that a victim of abuse told her that family planning policies involving coercion and force are stricter today than ever before in Sihui. Guy claims that the UNFPA had an office in the Office of Family Planning, located in the county government building. (8) She videoed the UNFPA office desk as evidence that UNFPA supports China's policy of coercive abortion and forced sterilizations.

There is no way to substantiate Guy's testimony of those she videotaped because PRI, citing privacy concerns, has refused to release the names of the people interviewed. It is also impossible to determine whether the alleged coercion took place after the UNFPA launched its China program in 1998, as PRI contends.

The grainy video picture of the "UNFPA desk," according to Guy and PRI, is the smoking gun. PRI president Mosher said the desk and its proximity to state family planning officials demonstrated that UN officials must have known that Chinese family-planning workers were coercing women in Sihui to have abortions or sterilizations. But nobody else who visited the area has been able to find this "UNFPA office desk." And a US State Department fact-finding team couldn't find the empty desk or any UN employee in the southern China county that Guy claimed to have seen. (9)

Two months after this testimony came Rep. Smith's letter urging Bush to withhold money from UNFPA. Citing PRI's investigation, he wrote: "The investigators were told that family planning is not voluntary in Sihui, and coercive family-planning policies in Sihui include: age requirements for pregnancy; birth permits; mandatory use of IUDS; mandatory sterilization; crippling fines for noncompliance; imprisonment for noncompliance; destruction of homes and property for noncompliance; forced abortion and forced sterilization." Smith urged Bush to exercise a prerogative given presidents in the Kemp-Kasten Amendment that orders money to be withheld from any organization or program that, "as determined by the President of the United States, supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or sterilization." On January 12, 2002, Bush put a hold on the UNFPA money.

PRI, Rep. Smith, and the Bush administration all ignored the fact that in 2001, China passed a new national population law that represents significant progress toward the rule of law and adoption of fundamental human rights principles (see p12).

Because of the attention PRI has managed to generate, says UNFPA director of information Stifling Scruggs, 145 diplomats have visited the Chinese counties where UNFPA operates. "They're the most reviewed development projects in the world," he says. None of those diplomats have raised concerns about what they saw. (10)

The UN's own investigative team, headed by Nicolas Biegman, a former Dutch ambassador to NATO and current NATO ambassador to Macedonia, was unable to substantiate any of PRI's claims. Other delegations have come to similar conclusions. A British delegation concluded that the UNFPA does not participate in coercive family planning practices in China.

Despite ample evidence disproving PRI's claims, the Bush administration nonetheless dispatched a State Department team to investigate the latest allegations. The State Department team conducted a two-week evaluation in May 2002, and was unable to find any UNFPA desk or worker in Sihui, according to team member Theodore Tong, a professor of pharmacy, public health and toxicology at the University of Arizona.

Tong said the team traveled 6,000 miles in the air and more than 500 on the ground during 14 days in 12 Chinese townships. The team made unplanned visits to schools and factories, and were able to speak freely with random Chinese. They found no evidence that the UNFPA supported China's population control policy of forced abortion and sterilization. The State Department team released a report recommending that Bush release the US contributions to the UNFPA.

The team's findings paralleled the findings of similar British evaluations--the UNFPA is an effective mainstream health organization. A Catholic antiabortion member of parliament from the United Kingdom, Edward Leigh, told the Washington Times upon returning from his own investigative trip to China, "There was evidence UNFPA is trying to persuade China away from the program of strict targets and assessments. My personal line is British or US funds should not be used for coercive family planning, and I found no evidence of such practices in China." (11)

Secretary of State Colin Powell, on record as supportive of the UNFPA, defended the administration's decision, claiming the UNFPA'S presence enables China to more effectively charge "crushing fines" to parents who have babies without the government's permission, which he said amounted to coercion. He invoked Kemp-Kasten because he concluded that the UNFPA indirectly helps China levy fees and perform abortions by providing it with computers, medical equipment and vehicles.

It is convenient at this time in Bush's political career to give in to PRI's disproved claims. The president would rather appease right-wing conservatives than provide health care to needy women and children around the world. Bush and his top advisors credit the right-wing conservatives for placing them in the White House, and now it is payback time.

The administration insists the money will still go to women's health, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) instead of the United Nations Population Fund. The problem with this, aside from further alienating America's allies who all support UNFPA, is that USAID operates only in 80 countries, as opposed to the UNFPA's 142. USAID does not maintain staff in countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, which are among the most ravaged places on earth. (12)

The victims of President Bush's decision are the women and children not served by the UNFPA. The number of victims is now greatly increased, thanks to pandering to the ultraconservative anti-family planning lobby by the Bush administration. It appears there is no price too high for this administration when it comes to political payoffs.

NOTES

(1) Lindlaw, Scott, "US to Withhold $34M in UN Funds," Associated Press, July 22, 2002.

(2) Goldberg, Michelle, "The Zealots Behind President Bush's U.N. Family Planning Sellout," Salon.com, June 13, 2002.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Enda, Jodi, "Small Advocacy Group Influences American Policy," Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 18, 2002.

(6) Ibid.

(7) Testimony of Josephine Guy before the House Committee on International Relations, October 17, 2001.

(8) Ibid.

(9) Enda, Jodi. "Small Advocacy Group Influences American Policy," Knight Ridder Newspapers, 18 September, 2002.

(10) Goldberg, Michelle. 13 June 2002.

(11) Thinmarayanapuram, Desikan, "Envoys to Probe Use of US Funds for Forced Abortions," Washington Times, 12 May 2002.

(12) Ibid.

JENNIFER BERNSTEIN is Director of Public Policy at Catholics for a Free Choice.