Every time I try to read an issue of this magazine in one sitting, my brain threatens to explode. With righteous indigation, sure, but also with inspiration. At any rate, pass this message on.
http://www.unfpa.org/support/friends/34million.htm
"Campaign founders, Lois Abraham, a lawyer from New Mexico, and Jane Roberts, a retired French teacher and tennis coach from California, had never met, but they shared the same indignant reaction when the United States Administration withheld $34 million that Congress had appropriated for UNFPA."
"The United States is the only country ever to deny funding to UNFPA for non-budgetary reasons. In July 2002, the U.S. Administration announced its decision to withhold $34 million - that had previously been appropriated by Congress to UNFPA - based on false claims that the Fund supports coercive abortion in China. The decision was taken despite recommendations made by a State Department fact-finding team to release the funds."
http://www.unfpa.org/support/friends/34million.htm
Comments
I don't know enough about this issue, but I do know that I don't support mandatory abortions, so if any tax money is going to that, I would have a problem.
The allegations that the money was to support "mandatory" abortions is higly spurious from what I have read. The fact that that money was doing mostly other important medical work and helping get sex education and knowledge about birth control out there into a world that doesn't have it was what really burned my cookies. This is what happens when you let fundies run the country, they exert their morality in nefarious ways.
That's just my opinion, I recommend as you have that others read up on it and get their own.
Also, if you don't want your tx dollars helping other people, then you could always protest by not paying them.
"The [State Department] report is unequivocal in dismissing the allegations. 'We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC,' it says. 'We therefore recommend that ... [the] $34 million which has already been appropriated be released to UNFPA.'"
I'm not clear on what happened in China, but it does not make sense to give up on the idea for the rest of the world.
I honestly don't know how far the UN is going with that. Are they supporting it by not talking about it? I doubt that they are taking people away for abortions. My Cuban and Syrian human rights council would never allow that!
That's why they sent the State Department in to find out, and the answer was, the UN isn't having anything to do with it. The Ms. article goes into a little more detail about how Bush got his evidence and why it's so spurious. Let's put it this way, the translators were very carefully chosen.