Humanitarian organization adds a third "action item" to Speaker Boehner's two requests
After three days of news, remarks and clarifications about our government’s stance on the One-Child Policy, American leaders are ready to assign “action items” in response to China’s coercive birth planning policy. It’s time to move away from focusing on differences and towards care for women in China. Earlier today, Speaker of the House John Boehner called on the Administration to back up its words with action.
First, Speaker Boehner said, the Vice President should publicly state his condemnation of the One-Child Policy. Second, President Obama should announce that that United States will stop funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is complicit in China’s forced abortions and forced sterilizations.
All Girls Allowed, a humanitarian organization devoted to restoring life, value and dignity to girls and mothers, and to revealing the injustice of China’s One-Child Policy, strongly affirms these requests by the Speaker. The Administration must back up its stance on the One-Child Policy with clear action—otherwise the words have little significance.
Concern for women and families in China and around the globe has caused many to fight for UNFPA funding to remain, despite links to the organization’s involvement in China’s forced abortions and sterilizations. With this concern in mind, All Girls Allowed adds a third action item to these requests: Redirect the funding from UNFPA to help end prenatal sex-selection and female infanticide in China.
This “gendercide”— the systemic elimination of girls--is worsening annually, with 37 million girls already “missing” since the implementation of the One-Child Policy in 1980. Cutting funding to China’s Family Planning Commission (via the UNFPA) is a great start to stop the killing of girls, but it is not enough. A positive leap forward would be one that helps those who need it most. We recommend supporting China’s poor through a unique program designed to encourage mothers to keep their baby girls. Scholars have suggested that offering financial stipends to families that keep girls will provide enough incentive to change the traditional preference for sons in China. All Girls Allowed has completed a pilot version of this one-of-a-kind program in several villages throughout the poorest areas of China during the past year, with great success. We’ve seen that sex ratios can become more balanced throughout China as culture changes village by village, and through this model, girls’ lives can be saved.
The One-Child Policy is, as Mr. Biden’s office said in his retracted statement, repugnant. We can never undo the 30 years of damage it has caused to millions of women’s bodies, children’s lives and China’s stability as a nation. But we can help save girls, one at a time, through strategic aid to those in need. It is important to note that while American funding is involved in many projects around the world, no organization is talking gendercide in China in any tangible way, and that a program like this would be revolutionary.
In addition, without some intervention that begins to restore gender ratios, America will begin to face the reality that an imbalanced China has affected and will continue to affect our nation. There is an economic barrier created by single Chinese men saving money on a massive scale, thus impacting U.S. trade relations with China. There is a security risk created by 37 million single men unable to find wives, as historians have pointed out that countries with a large number of young, excess men are more likely to attack other nations or experience domestic turmoil. Our relationship with China is plagued by the gender imbalance caused by this Policy, a problem which will worsen with time.
In fact, this week a report from the Pentagon detailed that China's development of a new stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier and a record number of space launches over the past year puts it on pace to achieve its goal of building a modern, regionally focused military by 2020. The report released Tuesday says Beijing has closed critical technological gaps, and is rapidly modernizing its military equipment, all with an eye toward preventing possible U.S. intervention in a conflict with Taiwan. It also warns that the military expansion could increasingly stretch to the western Pacific in a move to deny U.S. and allied access or movement there. The Pentagon says the new stealth fighter along with longer range missiles could give Beijing the ability to strike regional air bases and other facilities.
To the Administration, we urge you to publicly declare your condemnation of this cruel policy, to defund the UNFPA, and to redirect aid to help those who need it most. This is in the best interest of China’s women, America’s economy and global security.
Posted by Speaker Boehner's Press Office on August 24, 2011
Obama White House Must Back Its Backpedaling With Action on “One-Child” Policy
It’s welcome news that a White House spokesman has clarified that the Vice President opposes China’s repugnant “one-child” policy, as Speaker Boehner said Monday he hoped the White House would. But now that such a clarification has been offered, the Obama administration needs to back its backpedaling with action.
There are two things the Obama administration can do immediately on this front. One is for the Vice President himself – the individual who holds the office, and who uttered the damaging comments Sunday – to publicly state the new words his staff has used. The other is for President Obama to announce the United States will stop contributing money to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which supports China and has been linked to implementation of the one-child policy. Until the administration takes these actions, the clarification issued by the Vice President’s spokesman Tuesday will ring hollow.
Why is it important for the Vice President himself to address the issue? The fact is that the Vice President of the United States traveled to China and said, with the eyes of that nation’s leaders upon him, that he “fully understands” the one-child policy and “isn’t second-guessing” it. It is reasonable for the leaders of China’s government to assume that when the Vice President of the United States speaks in an official setting on an official trip overseas, he speaks for the Obama Administration and the government of the United States. It is also reasonable for them to assume that when the Vice President of the United States says something, he means what he says. It’s also a good bet the leaders of China’s government are not scrutinizing U.S. media outlets for comments made by a White House staffer in response to questions from the media, or putting a great deal of stock in such a staffer’s comments even if they have noticed them.
If the Obama Administration truly opposes the one-child policy and truly cares about undoing the damage the Vice President’s comments have caused, the Vice President himself – or his boss, the President of the United States – should personally go on record immediately and unequivocally right the wrong.
Secondly, if the Obama administration is serious about its opposition to the one-child policy, the President should immediately halt U.S. contributions to the U.N. Population Fund, which has been linked in China to the one-child policy. President George W. Bush stopped U.S. contributions to the UNFPA in 2002, but they were resumed by President Obama when he took office in 2009, on the grounds that the fund doesn’t “directly” support abortion.
Until these two basic actions have been taken, the effect of the Biden incident is that the perpetrators of the one-child policy – the people with the power and authority to reverse it, and end the forced sterilizations and coercive abortions the policy has spawned – have been given further reason to believe that the United States government does not object to the one-child policy and doesn’t mind if it continues. They have been left with the impression that while some American leaders strenuously object to the policy – such as Speaker Boehner, who raised concerns about the one-child policy directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao in a meeting earlier this year – there are other American leaders, including the Vice President and President of the United States, who are willing to offer a wink and a nod, and let the Chinese government simply carry on with its reprehensible business.
By issuing a clarification through a spokesman, the White House has checked a political box on this side of the Pacific. Now the President and Vice President will show the world where their administration really stands by their actions.
