Posted on 10/05/2011 2:06:30 PM PDT by Hunton Peck
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee voted Wednesday to eliminate some $50 million that President Barack Obama requested for the U.N. organization that helps women and children in developing countries with reproductive health and family planning, a reflection of growing Republican anger with both the world body and its work in China.
The GOP-led Foreign Affairs Committee approved legislation that targets the yearly U.S. contribution to the U.N. Population Fund, an organization the United States helped found in the late 1960s. Republican administrations typically have withheld funds from the group, but Obama restored the money.
The party-line vote was 23-17.
Committee Republicans criticized the U.N. group's efforts in China, which limits urban families to one child and rural families to two if their first is a girl. The rules were established in 1979 to stem population growth in the world's most populous country, but critics complain that it has resulted in human rights abuses, such as forced sterilizations and abortions.
"Why, when Americans face a struggling economy, skyrocketing deficits and crushing debt should our taxpayer dollars got to an organization that supports coercive abortion and is flush with cash?" asked Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the committee. She said the U.N. Population Fund has unspent funds of some $500 million.
Democrats countered that the organization shouldn't be penalized for China's laws, especially when it does honorable work in places such as Haiti, the Congo and countries hard hit by natural disasters and regional strife.
"Don't hold the U.N. culpable for what a sovereign country does, as obnoxious as it is," said Rep. Howard Berman of California, the top Democrat on the committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at centurylink.net ...
Reproductive health and family planning are code words for abortions.
This article is like one long euphemism. The AP writer is so completely on board with the Dems it would be funny — if the subject weren’t mass infanticide.
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