WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) falsely denied that the United Nations (UN) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) facilitate abortions around the world, at a recent U.S. House of Representatives hearing about the practices of the international body.
In an incident highlighted recently by the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Dean made the comments during a UN reform hearing held by the House Foreign Affairs Oversight & Intelligence Subcommittee. The Trump administration should be “ashamed” to cut $377 million in federal grants to the UNFPA, she claimed, in part because “there is misinformation about what kind of healthcare services the agency does and does not provide … neither UNFPA nor any other UN agency provides abortions. Full stop.”
But, as detailed by C-Fam, that is far from the truth. It cites UNFPA giving money to pro-abortion group Ipas to facilitate abortions and abortion training in Bangladesh refugee camps, and a relationship with the organization that continued at least into 2022. The Fund’s UNFPA Supplies Partnership procurement platform supplies abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, as well as manual vacuum aspirators. The Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) it assists with implementing includes so-called “safe abortion care” among its services.
“UNFPA recently partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO) in offering an online course on ‘integration of a human rights-based approach to comprehensive abortion care,’ which draws from WHO’s abortion guidelines, which oppose any legal or practical barriers to abortion access,” C-Fam’s report adds.
The UNFPA, from which President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in January, added abortion as a component of “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in 2020.
That same year, it went so far as to condemn laws that ban abortions sought even for the purpose of targeting and exterminating girls. “Decisions to carry to term male but not female fetuses is a reflection of gender-discriminatory views that women and girls are worth less than men and boys,” its State of World Population report wrote. At the same time, “bans on sex selection are often ineffective and also infringe [so-called] reproductive rights, including access to [so-called] safe abortion in countries where abortion is legal,” it claimed.
As for Rep. Dean, she holds 100 percent pro-abortion ratings with Planned Parenthood and NARAL and 0 percent pro-life ratings with National Right to Life Committee and Susan B. Anthony. In 2022, she was one of 17 far-left members of Congress arrested by police during a planned “civil disobedience” protest, blocking the road outside of the U.S. Supreme Court after it overturned Roe v. Wade.