U.S. Cuts Off Financing for AIDS Program, Provoking Furor (NY Times, August 26, 2003, registration required): The State Department has discontinued financing for a small but well-regarded AIDS program for African and Asian refugees because it contends that one of the groups involved in the project supports forced abortions and involuntary sterilization in China, officials said this week. The decision to end the financing has raised a furor among AIDS and refugee groups. Relief workers fear that officials are bowing to pressure from anti-abortion factions within the Bush administration and allowing politics to interfere with desperately needed AIDS programs, assertions that the State Department denies.
Yes? And? Your point being?
Most intelligent people have long since figured out that politics always determines and interferes with policy -- good, bad, or indifferent. One does wonder why any organ of the government bothers to deny it. Frankly, that's the way most people want it ... until the policy that's compromised affects something in which they have an interest. At which point, a neutral yet benevolent government would be a really nice thing to have, thanks awfully.
The group, Marie Stopes International, offers abortion counseling and services. State Department officials acknowledge that they have no evidence to suggest that Marie Stopes is involved in forced abortions or involuntary sterilization, and the group itself says it has been trying to end forced abortions in China and to expand voluntary family planning.
But State Department officials say one problem is that Marie Stopes works as a partner in China with the United Nations Population Fund, a group that was barred from receiving aid last year after the Bush administration determined that it had violated a 1985 law barring the financing of any international group that "supports or participates in the management" of forced abortion or sterilization. In that instance, the State Department said the United Nations was cooperating with the Chinese government, which has been repeatedly accused of relying on coercive abortions to enforce birth quotas. The United Nations countered that it was working to change Chinese policy, and it noted that the State Department had determined that it had not knowingly supported coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. Nevertheless, the agency lost $34 million in financing.
So let me get this straight-ish: our government's position is that any support of abortions, whether knowing or unknowing, results in the revocation of aid. No matter what the larger goals of the group involved, whether it be general health care, AIDS prevention, family planning: any support of abortions, deliberate or otherwise, results in the loss of funds. That logic, at least, is possible to follow. But apparently, the group losing funding for its AIDS programs -- of which Marie Stopes International (MSI) is but one of seven administrators -- losing funding because MSI is affiliated with the UN organization which our government admits didn't knowingly support China's forced abortion policy. Despite the fact that MSI itself had nothing to do with either supporting the Chinese government policy or the UN organization itself. Despite the fact that MSI is, as mentioned, only one of seven groups affiliated with the AIDS group that's losing money.
That is some sincerely twisted logic. And frankly, a dodge not worthy of an administration with any courage at all. Why on earth don't they just say, "You know what? We're not going to support international family planning efforts of any sort. We don't believe in it, we don't want to have anything to do with it, and we're not going to do it." There would, of course, be an international hue and cry, but this administration is most assuredly used to that. Moreover, they've demonstrated that most of the time, unless it affects something they want to do, they simply don't care what the rest of the world thinks. Deciding to jettison any support for family planning programs would shore up the weakening support from the Republicans' right flank. And it would be intellectually honest -- which is probably why they're not doing it.
Posted by iain at August 28, 2003 01:06 PM
