U.N. Population Fund Deserves Our Support

The withholding of $34 million from the United Nations Population Fund is just another in a long line of actions that distance this country from the world community (July 21). Bowing to the political pocketbook dictates another policy that will prove to be hurtful to the most needy. The action was taken based upon a lie that the money funds disapproved-of practices in China. That has proved to be false, yet the administration refuses to release the report.

The U.N. Population Fund itself bars funding from going to programs involved in coercion. The withdrawal of the U.S. contribution will result in the downsizing of the program. Our contribution alone, it is estimated, prevents 2 million unintended pregnancies, nearly 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, nearly 60,000 cases of maternal illness and 77,000 infant and child deaths. This is a senseless action against those poor families of the world that need a fair and healthy start.

Sheila Hoff

Rancho Palos Verdes

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I am tremendously disappointed that the U.S. is withholding its contribution to the U.N. Population Fund because I think that overpopulation is a major component of almost every intractable social problem faced by the human race, and I think that preventing human lives from being initiated is a far better solution than allowing people to be born who have no place in this world.

Even though I am a member of a conservative, mainstream Protestant church that favors abstinence and adoption over abortion, I personally have no objection to abortion or contraception because of the following reasons: Every child born should be actively wanted, and no woman should be forced to have a child she does not want. The educational benefits from the fund could also conceivably reduce the amount of HIV among heterosexual women.

Kenneth L. Perry

Newport Beach