Sixty Congress Members Ask USAID to Stop US Funding from Going to UN Abortion Projects

Photo credit: Pepi Stojanovski / Unsplash

On August 13, sixty members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator to request that the agency take action to protect U.S. funding from being used by the U.N. to promote abortion.

The letter thanked USAID administrator John Barsa for advocating for the removal of abortion references from U.N. COVID-19 relief legislation while uring him to take additional actions against the misuse of funding.

“We agree with you that the U.N. should not use this crisis as an opportunity to advance access to abortion as an ‘essential service,’” the letter reads.

“The UN’s COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan is only the latest example of the U.N.’s brazen imposition of abortion and a fictitious international right to abortion, which violates the sovereignty of its member states and U.N. conventions that affirm the right to life.”

Specifically, the letter calls on Barsa to enforce the Siljander Amendment, a provision applied to international provisions since 1981 which bars the use of U.S. funds to provide or promote abortion.

“United States leaders and diplomats should insist that U.S.-supported international agreements and multilateral assistance do not include abortion under the guise of sexual and reproductive health,” they said. “This insistence is necessary to enforce the Siljander Amendment. This oversight is especially necessary for UN organizations that receive billions of dollars in US funding that are subject to the Siljander Amendment.”

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