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Overview - Abortion
Had they been more careful, UNFPA’s antagonists might have been forewarned. PRI’s lack of objectivity is evident in their checkered history. The institute began as a spin-off of Human Life International, a fundamentalist catholic extremist group with anti-Semitic leanings. HLI’s founder, Rev. Paul Marx, believes that “jewish doctors control the abortion movement”. PRI President Steven Mosher was appointed by Marx to spearhead their formation and has been the organization’s inspiration and driving force ever since. A rabid anti-family planning activist, Mosher conducted anthropological research in China from 1979 to 1980, and in 1983 was denied a PhD by Stanford for “illegal and seriously unethical conduct” in the field.
Details of the evidence for his expulsion were never made public by he or Stanford (due mainly to concern for the safety of witnesses still in China), but it appears that he’d had numerous run-ins with Chinese authorities, falsified records, and acquired and disseminated much of his data under questionable circumstances. Among other things, he published pictures in the Chinese media of women who had undergone late-term abortions, thereby putting them at risk for government retaliation. Since returning home he has tirelessly turned out inflammatory publications about China’s “evil empire”, “U.N. butchers”, the “myth” of overpopulation, and the importance of having as many children as possible to, among other things, “populate heaven with new souls”— the majority of which are circulated almost exclusively in Far-Right and pro-life extremist circles. While none of this bears directly on UNFPA, it raises serious concerns about the organization’s objectivity making the complete absence of any independent evidence of their accusations all the more telling.
In June of 2002 the State Department released information about their third fact-finding mission to China regarding UNFPA’s activities. Shortly thereafter, Congress voted overwhelmingly to reinstate U.S. funding and requested increased funding for the following year. But Bush was under pressure from the Religious Right, and apparently as unconcerned with the lack of evidence and PRI’s credibility problems as they were. He refused to reconsider the matter and in July of that year vetoed the reinstated funds, which as of this writing have not been restored. Denied this funding, UNFPA had to scale back many reproductive health care, education, and medical efforts worldwide, including child welfare programs and access to safe contraception—all of which have been shown repeatedly to decrease abortion rates.
Ironically, UNFPA has been one of the greater voices of restraint in China and done much to reduce the number of coercive abortions, sterilizations, and IUD implants. They have also increased emphasis on contraception and reproductive health in Chinese population management policy. Nevertheless as of this writing, with the Bush administration still in office and unwilling to even discuss the matter further much less examine the evidence or the impacts of defunding, U.S. policy on the matter has not changed.6
To put this in context, consider how UNFPA funds are used. They go directly to providing contraception, healthcare, treatment for botched abortions, and a host of other reproductive healthcare services in poverty stricken regions worldwide, all of which have proven track records in reducing abortion and maternal and infant mortality. Among other things UNFPA funds a fistula hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that treats hundreds of obstetric fistulas annually in a region where they are commonplace and no other facilities exist.
Obstetric fistulas are tears in the wall between the birth canal and lower intestinal tract that lead to pain, infection, sepsis, birth complications, and incontinence. In addition to the extreme and lifelong suffering they cause, women who get them also suffer continuous filth and foul smell due to the incontinence, and are often cast out by their husbands and communities. Many of these turn to prostitution to survive and starve to death for lack of community support. Obstetric fistulas are widespread in Ethiopia where poverty and female genital mutilation are common, and reproductive healthcare is limited at best. They are virtually non-existent in the Developed World. For more on the U.S. defunding of UNFPA and its consequences, see my June 2001 research letter to Congress on the issue.
Shutting down UNFPA fund shuts down these services, and there is a one-to-one relationship between their loss and increases in all the healthcare plagues they reduce, including abortion. According to some estimates the
U.S. defunding of UNFPA has resulted in,
- 800,000+ additional global abortions annually since—a rate nearly equal to the total annual abortion rate in the U.S.
- 40,000 additional maternal deaths annually.
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