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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
To satisfy the religious right, George W. Bush has punished the most vulnerable -- millions of women and girls from the world's poorest countries.
Oct 4, 2004 | The Bible makes many references to the use of "sacrificial lambs," young animals offered up to God to atone for the sins of the people. You may have thought this practice had fallen out of favor, but it seems George W. Bush has resurrected the sacrificing of the innocent to atone for his political sins.
However, his offerings are disproportionately of one gender: girls and women from the planet's poorest nations. By his decision to cancel aid for three years in a row to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which supports the reproductive health rights of women around the world, he has willingly sacrificed millions of innocent female lives. This was made abundantly clear by global healthcare professionals at the recent Countdown 2015 conference in London, which examined the progress of the U.N.'s watershed Cairo summit on population and development in 1994.
One of Bush's first acts as president was to begin his political payback to the religious right, which helped him win the White House, by going after the UNFPA. Bush immediately cut off funding that had been appropriated by both houses of Congress -- money the UNFPA used to pay for birth control, prenatal care, pap smears, mammograms and AIDS prevention programs. As recently as July 15 of this year, Bush announced he would hold back $34 million in U.S. funding earmarked for these programs. But one wonders if Mr. Compassionate Conservative, as Bush labeled himself in the 2000 campaign, is capable of looking beyond the currying of right-wing votes to consider the magnitude of his choices -- to understand that women will give birth to babies they can't afford to feed, mothers the age of Laura Bush will die in childbirth, family matriarchs the age of Barbara Bush will die from undiagnosed breast cancer, and daughters the same age as his twins will contract HIV/AIDS.
The administration's excuse is that the UNFPA supports coercive abortion policies in China. But just as the Bush administration's "intelligence" first found -- then couldn't find -- weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the president seems equally (or conveniently) confused about the UNFPA. After an investigation, even the president's own advisors reported that UNFPA did not support or participate in China's abortion policy and recommended he restore their funding.
Today, on the U.S. State Department's own Web site, you get two conflicting opinions. Spokesman Richard Boucher defends Bush's edict: "We have continuously called on China to end its program of coercive abortion. We also have repeatedly urged China and the UN Population Fund to restructure the organization's programs in a way that would allow the United States to provide funding. We will continue these consultations. However, since no key changes have taken place, these restrictions are being applied again."
Another page on the same government Web site/sings a different tune. "Background Note: China," compiled by the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, states: "Recent international efforts, including those funded by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), are demonstrating to government officials that a voluntary, non-coercive approach to family planning can be effective in promoting sustainable population growth."
