Crucial Birth Control Funding

Five years ago, the United Nations set out on a new course in population control, one that emphasized economic health, the environment and improving the lives of women. The developed world, including the United States, and beneficiary nations agreed to share the $17-billion yearly cost of this plan, blandly named the United Nations Funding Program of Action (UNFPA). The effort has struggled for funds ever since. Congress, which canceled U.S. aid last year in a fit of pique, is about to vote on restoring funding. The money would be well spent.

The U.N. program seeks to provide reproductive health services, education of women and girls, involvement of men in family planning, education on HIV and AIDS, help with sustainable development and environmental awareness, and understanding that all these things are related. In Latin America, the program is credited for dramatic reductions in fertility rates.

The United States supported the UNFPA from the beginning, but last September the U.S. share was canceled after conservatives objected to some aspects of China’s family planning programs. The irony is that the UNFPA has not supported or funded nonvoluntary family planning, including and especially abortion, in China or elsewhere. Its strong support for informed and voluntary family planning actually reduces abortion.

In April, the International Relations Committee in the House of Representatives voted to restore funding for the U.N. program; the full House will vote by the end of this week on an appropriation of $25 million for each of the next two fiscal years. The UNFPA benefits the lives of the poor and the global environment. It deserves steady U.S. support.