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FRONT ROYAL--Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis (R-1st) was present when the Population Research Institute presented evidence on forced abortions and sterilizations in China to the House International Relations Committee. She listened as we told of how women are brutally persecuted by communist officials if they refuse to submit to a coerced abortion.
In September 2001, PRI investigators interviewed abuse victims in a "model" county program of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Sihui, Southern China. Interviews were recorded.
Victims said that if they refuse a coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization, officials destroy their homes and throw them into prison. We interviewed a victim who escaped forced abortion by hiding in a nearby village. As punishment, nine of her relatives were thrown into prison. Government officials destroyed their homes and belongings with jackhammers.
Our evidence was corroborated by a State Department team that traveled to China in May 2002 to investigate UNFPA's support of forced abortion. Since 1998, UNFPA has been operating in 32 so-called "model county" programs in China. UNFPA claims that coercion has ended in these counties. But the U.S. delegation found that these 32 counties "retain coercive elements in law and practice."
In one UNFPA model county, a county magistrate told State Department investigators that fines for illegal births are as high as 8,000 yuan--as much as ten times a victim's annual salary. The State Department rightly concluded that these fines are levied to coerce women to undergo abortions.
In county after county, the State Department found that UNFPA supports coercive abortion in China with financial, technical and medical support.
On July 21, Secretary of State Colin Powell notified Congress that the "UNFPA's support of, and involvement in, China's population planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion."
In light of U.S. law, Secretary Powell concluded that UNFPA's support of China's coercive population program precludes it from receiving $34 million in U.S. funding.
Faced with the prospect of losing $34 million, UNFPA's media flacks swung into action. They claimed, wrongly, that the State Department found no evidence linking the UNFPA to coercive practices in China. Many in the media bought this story, which was repeated in a recent article in The Free Lance-Star ["Davis is out in front on family planning 'gag rule,'" March 10].
Rep. Davis was personally attacked for supporting Colin Powell's decision to withhold funding from the UNFPA. But if anyone is being gagged, it is women in China who are not allowed a choice in childbearing, and who are threatened with punishment if they speak out in protest. To attack Rep. Davis is a slap in the face to these victims of forced abortion.
Women are being abused in China. I was the first American social scientist to document China's one-child policy in the early 1980s. China's population program remains coercive today.
UNFPA flacks are still working overtime. Seeking to discredit PRI's findings, UNFPA launched a team to China to interview women in the presence of Chinese officials. This cover-up attempt culminated in the finding that UNFPA does not adequately monitor its program in China.
Recently, UNFPA announced the expansion of its China program. UNFPA claims to be helping China's government promote the principles of voluntarism, introduced at the 1994 U.N. population conference in Cairo. But PRI recently completed its second investigation in China. In the words of Chinese officials we interviewed about the one-child policy, UNFPA's "claims [of voluntarism] are impossible." Not merely "questionable," or even "unlikely," but impossible.
Another Free Lance-Star article claims that the 1994 U.N. population conference "forged a consensus that stressed women's health and equality, and highlighted maternal mortality as a major public health issue" ["A life and death issue," March 9].
But the primary issue of debate at this U.N. conference was abortion. The focal point of the final U.N. document was "reproductive health services." The Clinton delegation at the conference promoted abortion as "reproductive health."
Population-control groups like UNFPA and the International Planned Parenthood Federation relentlessly promote abortion at the expense of basic health and human rights.
Over the past two decades, throughout much of the world, fertility rates have plummeted, while preventable infant and maternal death rates remain alarmingly high.
Still, coercive population programs abound. American women would not tolerate such abuses at home. Should we turn a blind eye to these abuses overseas?
Rep. Davis, along with many in Congress, seeks to expand pro-life protections of the Mexico City policy, so that women in the developing world receive basic care they desire. The world would be a much better place if there were more members of Congress like Jo Ann Davis.
STEVEN W. MOSHER is president of the Population Research Institute.