New York
The Bush administration this week announced it would withhold $34 million from United Nations family-planning programs, and instead spend the money on its own health projects abroad. The U.N. Population Fund filters money to Chinese agencies involved with the country’s one-child policy, which coerces women to have abortions, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “No woman should be forced to have an abortion,” he said. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said U.N. employees do not “go around encouraging abortions.” The Population Fund, officials said, actually offers Chinese women an alternative to coercive government policies. The U.S. money, they said, could have helped prevent 2 million unwanted pregnancies and 800,000 abortions.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
ECHR: is Europe about to break with convention?Today's Big Question Keir Starmer calls for European leaders to ‘push for modernisation of interpretation’ of 75-year-old asylum laws in bid to counter populist right
-
Normalising relations with the Taliban in AfghanistanThe Explainer The regime is coming in from the diplomatic cold, as countries lose hope of armed opposition and seek cooperation on counterterrorism, counter-narcotics and deportation of immigrants
-
Best poetry books of 2025The Week Recommends Magnificent collections from Luke Kennard, Leo Boix and Isabelle Baafi
