The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has censured the United Nations for including access to abortion into its Global Humanitarian Response Plan to COVID-19 “by cynically placing the provision of ‘sexual and reproductive health services’ on the same level of importance as food-insecurity, essential health care, malnutrition, shelter, and sanitation”.
Yesterday, in a letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa condemned his organisation for using “crisis as an opportunity to advance access to abortion as an ‘essential service’” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan, seeking $6.7 billion from nations around the world, purports to prioritise “the needs of the most vulnerable, including older people, people with disabilities, and women and girls”.
Having consulted the World Health Organisation (WHO), however, which has sought to exploit the pandemic to advance its pro-abortion agenda, as reported by SPUC, the UN is similarly attempting to impose abortion on nations by including it as a condition for financial assistance.
USAID responds
Mr Barsa responded firmly on behalf of President Trump’s administration.
Reaffirming the President’s message to the 74th UN General Assembly last year, that his presidency will “never tire of defending innocent life”, Mr Barsa warned that “the UN should not intimidate or coerce Member States that are committed to the right to life. To use the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification to pressure governments to change their laws is an affront to the autonomy of each society to determine its own national policies on health care. The United States stands with nations that have pledged to protect the unborn.”
The letter also requested that the UN “remove references to ‘sexual and reproductive health’, and its derivatives from the Global HRP, and drop the provision of abortion as an essential component of the UN’s priorities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic”.
Withdrawing future financial aid?
Highlighting that USAID has allocated $650.7 million in international aid to combat the pandemic, of which $45.3 million has gone to UN agencies – part of $3.5 billion in overall financial support for the UN’s activities in 2019 – Mr Barsa appeared to signal that President Trump’s administration might rethink and withdraw future aid, including for Global Humanitarian Response Plan, if the UN insisted on making access to abortion a condition of COVID-19 assistance.
As seen before, when President Trump recently withdrew funding from the pro-abortion WHO, the current administration has shown that it is willing to hold such organisations to account during the pandemic.
John Smeaton, SPUC Chief Executive, said: “President Trump continues to burnish his credentials as the most pro-life president in US history. He and his supporters in the U.S. represent a major challenge to the globalist pro-abortion agenda which is in overdrive during this coronavirus crisis. SPUC is a non-religious organisation but personally I will be praying for him in the forthcoming US presidential election. Millions of the most defenceless human lives in the world are depending on President Trump.”