First Class Mail

An informal poll shows that 70% of littleboxes staff members found this editorial in the Star Tribune to be "spot on." Another 20% of the staff thinks the tribune is a commie-rag, while 10% were too loaded up on cough syrup to answer the question.

For as long as he's occupied the White House, President Bush has been denying U.S. funding to the U.N. Population Fund, an agency which is generally thought to have averted more abortions, assured more safe births and saved the lives of more mothers and infants than any other entity on Earth. By denying it U.S. funding, Bush is fueling the very fire he wants to extinguish: abortion.

So long as women around the world experience unwanted pregnancies, it's pretty much certain that abortion rates will remain lamentably high. The same goes for poverty- and childbirth-related death rates.

The surest way to reduce all these troubling numbers is to guarantee that women everywhere have access to contraception and other reproductive health services. Yet as the UNFPA notes, nearly a quarter-billion women lack such access -- virtually all of them in developing countries.

That quarter-billion signifies more poverty, more abortions, more maternal and child deaths, all of which the United States should be clamoring to help the UNFPA avert. Yet as the years pass, President Bush has grown more and more steadfast in his insistence that the United States won't support UNFPA. His reason? He seems to have swallowed some serious misinformation alleging that UNFPA's work in China underwrites forced abortions there.

Even the president's own investigators found no proof of UNFPA involvement in such coercive tactics. The administration shrugged off that finding last week -- accusing the UNFPA of giving its "seal of approval" to China's "birth limitation" program and urging the agency to halt all operations in the country.

The charge is as baseless as the call for withdrawal is dangerous. As UNFPA chief Thoraya Obaid frequently notes, the agency's 26-year presence in China has helped nudge the country to back away from the coercive policies of the past.
China's deputy U.N. ambassador Zhang Yishan granted the point last week: With UNFPA's help, he said, China has launched dozens of population-management programs based on "advanced-international concepts" in which strong-arming plays no part.

That's progress -- the sort any fan of freedom should applaud. Bush nevertheless remains resolved to withhold this year's $34 million contribution to the UNFPA. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives rejected a measure that would have required the money's transfer.

The Senate, which has yet to consider the matter, may very well manage a word of protest against this counterproductive parsimony. But the protest won't stop abortion or save lives. President Bush foreclosed that option when he decided to deny UNFPA funding again.

By deprived the agency of U.S. money, the president will effectively keep the UNFPA from preventing thousands of abortions and maternal and child deaths -- not to mention the birth of millions of children destined to crushing poverty.
And the reason the president favors this is ... ?