{"id":1955,"date":"2005-11-16T12:42:52","date_gmt":"2005-11-16T19:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/16\/1955\/"},"modified":"2005-11-16T12:42:52","modified_gmt":"2005-11-16T19:42:52","slug":"1955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1955","title":{"rendered":"Ellen Sauerbrey and the UN Population Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at The Inkwell<\/a>, the IWF’s blog, one of the Charlottes explains why feminists oppose Ellen Sauerbrey, Bush’s nominee for “Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the United Nations”:<\/p>\n

[She] supports the Bush administration’s withholding $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund because the agency has made financial contributions to China’s policy of forced-abortions to limit family size.<\/p>\n

The IWF has no position on abortion…but I’m going out on a limb and say that many of us would agree that forced abortion is wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Charlotte misstates the issue. Everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees that forced abortion is wrong. And everyone agrees that it would be wrong for UNFPA (the UN Population fund) to support forced abortion. There’s no controversy there.<\/p>\n

The controversy is over whether or not the accusations against UNFPA are true. Every Western agency that has sent investigators to China to try to verify the accusations (made by an ultra-right-wing, anti-birth-control group) has come away convinced the accusations are untrue – including a group sent by Bush’s own state department. Furthermore, virtually all the investigators came away convinced that UNFPA was doing a lot to help the women of China – not by giving them forced abortions, but by giving them more choices.<\/p>\n

For instance, the UK investigators, headed by Edward Leigh, a pro-life MP who has frequently criticized UNFPA, wrote:<\/p>\n

The UK MP delegation was convinced that the UNFPA programme is a force for good, in moving China away from abuses such as forced-family planning, sterilisation and abortions…. It is vitally important that the UNFPA remains actively involved in China, with continued financial support from the UK and other Western Governments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We all want less abusive practices in China. But the one western agency which is effectively working in China to change abusive practices is UNFPA, and defunding them is a step in the wrong direction. That’s why feminists who care about helping women in China – and in hundreds of other countries where UNFPA operates, providing essential help and medical care – are right to oppose Ellen Sauerbrey’s nomination.<\/p>\n

For a detailed discussion of how paltry the evidence against UNFPA is – and how group after group, from all over the idealogical spectrum, has found the charges against UNFPA baseless – see this earlier post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at The Inkwell, the IWF’s blog, one of the Charlottes explains why feminists oppose Ellen Sauerbrey, Bush’s nominee for “Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the United Nations”: [She] supports the Bush … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unfpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}