UN Commission Withholds Key Aid During COVID Pandemic Demanding Funding for Abortion

How does that saying go, “never waste a good crisis”? Well, certain Member States of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development are certainly heeding that advice and using every opportunity they can, including COVID-19-related crises, to push their radical pro-abortion agenda.

On July 10th, the U.N. news agency posted articles outlining the severe food crisis Yemen is currently facing during the pandemic. According to the report, “two million children require treatment for acute malnutrition ‘of which around 360,000 are at risk of dying without treatment.’”

Yet, the U.N. has been unable to provide the aid needed to assist in the crisis because some of the Commission’s 47 Member States are insisting that the aid sent include coverage for abortions. That’s right…in order to save hundreds of thousands of malnourished children in Yemen, the murder of unborn children must also be funded. And this despite the fact that abortion is generally illegal in Yemen. Clearly, there is no crisis that pro-abortion activists won’t exploit to push their agenda.

As a current Population Commission member, the U.S. has pushed back against the pro-abortion agenda and called for the Commission to remove funding for abortion. According to reports, “[t]he UN population commission tried twice to negotiate an agreement this year, once before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, and another time this month. In both cases the chair of the commission withdrew the draft agreements rather than accommodate the U.S. pro-life concerns.”

But the Population Commission isn’t alone at the U.N. in pushing a pro-abortion agenda. In May of this year, the U.N. Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP) required that “sexual and reproductive health services” – code for “abortion” – be given the “same level of importance as food-insecurity, essential health care, malnutrition, shelter, and sanitation.”

Member States had no input in the GHRP, so the language remained a part of the $2 billion COVID-19 aid package.

But the Trump Administration called out the U.N.’s pro-abortion agenda in a May 2020 letter to the U.N. Secretary-General:

[m]ost egregious is that the Global HRP calls for the widespread distribution of abortion-inducing drugs and abortion supplies, and for the promotion of abortion in local country settings.

The letter went on to note:

Member States are deeply divided over the use of the term ‘sexual and reproductive health’ and its derivatives, and it is among the most polarizing issues raised in UN negotiations. . . . Now is not the time to add unnecessary discord to the COVID-19 response.

Nevertheless, adding unnecessary discord is exactly what some U.N. Member States have continued to insist upon, choosing to deny life-saving aid for nearly 10 million vulnerable and starving children and adults rather than simply removing language that allocates some of that funding for abortion.

Pro-abortion activists, like those at the U.N., continue to expose their radical agenda and general lack of genuine concern for life. Abortion is as anti-life as you can get, especially when you use vulnerable and dying children as an excuse to fund the murder of unborn babies.

These radical forces at the U.N. are willing to let young kids die in order to ensure that more babies die. It’s sick, and a double affront to life.

Here at the ACLJ, we are exposing and fighting against the radical pro-abortion agenda every day. We are drafting a letter to the Chair of the Population Commission – Luxembourg – and to the EU representatives at the U.N. Population Fund, asking them to bring the aid text back up for discussion – this time without the abortion-funding language included. Starving children deserve aid and protection, and what we’re asking is that the U.N. focus on them instead of abortion.

Join with us.

UPDATE: We have just sent individual letters to each of the Member States involved in this decision-making process at the U.N., demanding they allow this vital aid to go to those in need and not require more funding for abortion.