Population Punishment

The Agency for International Development has now completed its investigation of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, and has found no evidence that it was financing abortions or coerced birth-control programs in China. As a result, $36 million of the current year’s U.S. contribution was paid to UNFPA on March 30. But $10 million has been held back, and Congress is now being asked to permit its diversion to other population projects.

M. Peter McPherson, administrator of AID, has said that the $10 million is being diverted to avoid giving even the appearance that the U.S. government condones the coercive practices of “one country,” which an aide quickly identified as China. No U.S. population money was bound for China, but $10 million just happens to be about what UNFPA would have been expected to spend in China this year--never mind that none of the money was to go for coercive practices.

McPherson was right in freeing the UNFPA funds. He was wrong in holding back the $10 million. This evidently was the price that the Administration felt it had to pay to try to calm the strident attack on foreign aid for population programs that is being conducted in Washington by foes of abortion and also by foes of contraception.

China is now a target of convenience for all sides involved in the population dispute. Those who support population programs and want to isolate the opponents, as well as traditional foes, have voted for bans on population funds for China. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has seized on this panic to win overwhelming support for an amendment that would impose a worldwide ban on American help for any agency doing any business with a nation where infanticide or coerced abortion is practiced, meaning China--an amendment that could cripple some of the most effective population programs.

The indignation regarding China is understandable. There are numerous reports of couples killing babies or being forced to accept abortions. The government insists that coercion is not national policy and that the excesses have been isolated, rare and due to the zeal of mistaken officials. But that has not eased international criticism.

For all the indignation, however, there seems no justification for the punitive approach being taken in Washington. U.S. funds are not involved and never were, and the use of foreign aid for abortion has long been prohibited. The criticism suffers distortion, for it ignores the alternative. In the past, China’s population was controlled by famine. Now it is controlled by draconian government policy. Both would seem to be violations of fundamental human rights. Americans may often have grave difficulty judging situations in impoverished nations where there is a desperation unknown in the United States, where principles are clouded by overwhelming realities. In defending human rights, Americans are often more influential when they restrain the impulse to impose solutions and demonstrate respect for those wrestling with the problems in other nations.

The strident campaign in the United States of those trying to convert the world population program into an instrument of their own ideas and beliefs seems to be failing. That is encouraging. In both House and Senate there have been committee votes in recent weeks that signal a restoration of good sense, of a freeing of funding for effective programs including both the U.N. program and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Those are the priorities--not punishing the nation with the world’s worst population problem.