CWA Supports Chinese Women Exposing Coerced Abortion in China Call for President to Give Zero Funds to UNFPA

1/24/2002

From: Rebecca L. Riggs of Concerned Women for America, 202-488-7000 www.media.cwfa.org

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 -- Two women who have experienced the brutality of China's coercive population control programs are calling for President Bush to refuse funds to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). CWA also urges Bush to refuse U.S. tax dollars to any nation or organization that supports coercive abortion, as the UNFPA does.

Gao Xiao Duan, a former administrator of a Planned Birth Control Office in the People's Republic of China, and Ma Dong Fan -- who was forced to have an abortion and given an intra-uterine device (IUD) without her knowledge, and later forced to have Norplant implanted before she fled China- will explain China's cruel tactics of population control enforcement at a press conference today. "These are tragic stories of women losing their children by force. Mrs. Gao and Mrs. Ma are living proof that spending American tax dollars in support of such barbarism is unconscionable," said Sandy Rios, President of Concerned Women for America.

"We urge the president to do what is morally right and consistent with his own convictions. We grieve with these women and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in asking President Bush not to give one red American cent to the UNFPA!"

President Bush has temporarily halted funding to the UNFPA to consider whether the $34 million dollars Congress appropriated for the UNFPA should be provided. Evidence shows the UNFPA is involved in coerced abortions and uses measures that endanger the health of women. Zero funding for the UNFPA is the only way to protect women. These women's stories and UNFPA's knowledge of coerced abortion in China are corroborated by an investigation by Population Research Institute, which discovered that UNFPA works closely with the Chinese government's Office of Family Planning in China. Women testify that Chinese family planning workers track pregnant women down, jail family members, impose massive fines, and destroy their homes. UNFPA representative in China, Sven Burmester, recently said, "For all the bad press, China has achieved the impossible. The country has solved its population problem." UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid has "praised" the "notable achievements" of the Chinese policy.

Concerned Women for America is the nation's largest public policy women's organization.