Volume 6, Number 39

September 19, 2003

"Catholics" for a Free Choice Confirms Coercion in China But Does Not Care

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) Even though an investigative team sent to UN Population Fund (UNFPA) program counties in China by “Catholics” for a Free Choice (CFFC) found evidence of the same coercive tactics that led the Bush administration to defund UNFPA, CFFC lavished praise on the work of UNFPA in China and demanded that the Bush administration refund the UN population control agency.

     In May 2002, a US investigative team in China found that UNFPA operates in at least one county in which women who have more than one child must pay a “social compensation fee,” a penalty sometimes as high as three years worth of income. According to Secretary of State Colin Powell, such “crushing fines” constitute a “program of coercive abortion,” since they “have the purpose or effect of forcing mothers to have abortions.” What is more, Powell concluded, “UNFPA is helping improve the administration of the local family planning offices that are administering the very social compensation fee and other penalties that are effectively coercing women to have abortions.”

     The CFFC team sent to China found that these fines still exist in UNFPA counties, something UNFPA promised would end. Ronald Green, chairman of the Dartmouth College department of religion, told the Associated Press, “Some areas with UNFPA programs still imposed ‘morally undesirable’ fees on couples who violated birth limits.” However, Green sought to downplay the significance of the fines, as well as UNFPA’s possible complicity in their continuation, telling the Associated Press, “the fund [UNFPA] publicly opposed such fees and they often weren’t collected.”

     It is uncertain whether Green and the other members of the team even consider such fines to be a form of coercion, since Green concluded, “I believe we can say with some degree of confidence that all the programs with which UNFPA is currently associated are committed to avoiding any practice of forced abortion or sterilization.”

     The CFFC investigative team included Muslim, Jewish and Protestant leaders, as well as CFFC President Francis Kissling. The members of the group have a long public record of support for abortion rights and for UNFPA, itself.

     It is not clear whether members of the team spoke to any individual women, or if they followed routine human rights investigative procedures, such as meeting witnesses in safe locations, outside the presence or knowledge of Chinese government officials. Kissling admitted that “The slice of knowledge that we have is very limited,” but felt assured that “We do have feel that we have gotten a very good picture of how UNFPA operates.”

     Since UNFPA lost its US funding, advocates of the agency have been forced to downplay all evidence of coercion in China. Along with the CFFC trip to China, there have been a number of recent International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) press releases praising slight changes in Chinese family law, such as a local relaxation of a law requiring government approval of the choice of one’s spouse.

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