April 12 Daily News editorial

U.S. dollars are flowing to the United Nations Population Fund this month for the first time since the Bush administration banned support for the global family planning fund in early 2001. President Obama lifted the ban shortly after taking office in January, and Congress recently voted approval of a $50 million allocation to UNFPA.

This restoration of U.S. support will help make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of women and their families worldwide. For far too long, political expediency has trumped reality on this issue.

The previous administration withheld money Congress had set aside for the U.N. fund on the claim that some of the money would end up paying for involuntary abortions in China. The Bush administration carried its anti-UNFPA campaign a step further in 2003, blocking funding for an AIDS program benefiting African and Asian refugees, asserting that one of the family planning groups taking part in the program worked in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund.

The State Department admitted at the time that it had no evidence of the group supporting involuntary abortion. There was no such evidence. Indeed, there was never any evidence that UNFPA money supports forced abortion of sterilization in China or anywhere else — just a desire on the part of the Bush administration to pander to its most extreme anti-abortion constituencies. The administration had tried to produce such evidence a year before, dispatching a three-member team of investigators to China in spring 2002. The investigators returned empty-handed. Their report recommended that the administration release the $34 million Congress had set aside to UNFPA. The administration rejected that recommendation.

Now, some seven years later, the United States has rejoined the global effort to promote women’s health and rights. The U.S. contribution is sorely needed. Nearly 19 percent of the world’s population lives in absolute poverty. Some 200 million in that part of the world do not have access to effective contraception, according to the advocacy group Americans for UNFPA. Half of the 6,800 people newly infected with HIV each day are women who could benefit from the counseling and health services UNFPA provides.

The family planning programs are critical in the developing world, where pregnancy itself often proves fatal. UNFPA has programs in 90 countries working to prevent maternal death through the training of midwives and improved access to contraception and emergency obstetric care. These efforts in no way promote abortion. To the contrary, the voluntary family planning programs supported by the U.N. fund help prevent abortions by helping women prevent unwanted pregnancies.