Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1694573652056.pdf (Australia)
COALITION FOR THE DEFENCE OF HUMAN LIFE 40 Days for Life Association for Reformed Political Action Australian Christian Lobby Australian Christians Christian Reformed Churches Endeavour Forum FamilyVoice Australia Helpers of God’s Precious Infants Life Ministries Inc. Pregnancy & Life Education Ministries Pregnancy Assistance Pregnancy Problem House (Albany, Midwest, Nollamara) Right to Life Australia Thornlie Church of Christ Westminster Presbyterian Church Women Against Abortion Submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee Inquiry into Australia's Overseas Aid and Development Assistance Program This submission address the single question of whether, regardless of overall expenditure on overseas aid any Australian aid funds should be expended on the provision of abortion services or on training in the provision of abortion services.
Prior to March 2009 there was a longstanding bipartisan policy that Australian overseas aid would never be used to fund abortion services or training in abortion services.

Since March 2009 Australia has directly funded abortion services through overseas aid grants to abortion provider Marie Stopes International (for abortions in Mongolia and Cambodia), ChildFund (in Ethiopia), International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and International Planned Parenthood Federation (South Asia).
Additionally, Australia funds the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) which, although not a direct provider of abortion services, works closely with national governments in developing population control programmes that include abortion provision.

There are three issues to be addressed: Is there adequate accountability for the use of these funds?

• • Could any of these funds be used to pay for sex selection abortions and coerced abortions?
Is the funding of abortion related to any proper objective for overseas aid?

• 1.
• 1.

NO ADEQUATE ACCOUNTABILITY In an answer to a question on notice asked by Senator Ron Boswell at the Additional Estimates hearings in February 2013 it was revealed that: AusAID provides core funding ($20.5 million from 2010-13) to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) to provide reproductive health and family Australia's overseas aid and development assistance programSubmission 61 planning assistance in a range of countries.
Australia also provides earmarked support ($6 million disbursed to-date) to IPPF in South Asia (Nepal, Bangladesh, India and the Maldives).

This funding may be used to support safe abortion related services in countries where it is legal.
It is not possible for IPPF to distinguish where AusAID funding is spent, since it is pooled and distributed alongside other donor funds.1 [Emphasis added] Australian aid funds given to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities are similarly added to pooled funding and there is no accountability for where the funds are actually spent.2 It is not desirable for scarce Australia aid dollars to be given to multilateral organisations to use without being accountable to Australia as to where and how the funds are used.
Australian aid should be delivered on the ground to specific projects that can be properly monitored by Australian aid officials.

Recommendation 1: No Australian aid funds should be given to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, International Planned Parenthood Federation or International Planned Parenthood Federation (South Asia) as these multilateral organisations cannot account for where Australia aid funds are expended.

2.
2.

FUNDING SEX SELECTION AND COERCED ABORTIONS The United Nations Fund for Population Activity is heavily implicated in China’s coercive one child policy, which includes coerced abortions.
Giving evidence on 9 July 2012 United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Programs hearing Steve Mosher, from the Population Research Institute (PRI) reported on the PRI’s three year long investigation in five selected counties from the 40 so-called Model Birth Control Counties where the UNFPA has been at work for over a decade and has claimed that it has worked with the Chinese government to eliminate coercive practices in family planning.
Mosher produced evidence of routine coercion in these counties.

For example one town posted regulations threatening forced IUD implants for any woman who had a second child and forced sterilisation to any woman who had a third or higher order child.

1 http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/Estimates/Live/fadt_ctte/estimates/add_1213/dfat/ausaidqonanswers.

ashx 2 “ UNFPA’s budget in 2010 totalled US$870 million.
Australia provides UNFPA with core financial contributions through a multi-year partnership agreement (2009–13).
Under this framework AusAID will provide UNFPA with $38.5 million over four years in core funding and $4 million over four years to UNFPA’s Pacific Multi-Country Programme.” Australian Multilateral Assessment: United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), March 2012, p. 1-2, http://aid.dfat.gov.au/partner/Documents/unfpa-assessment.pdf Australia's overseas aid and development assistance programSubmission 61 In another county, billboards threaten couples who have a second or subsequent child with fines several times their annual income.
If the fines are not paid then the family’s house is sealed and sometimes torn down.

Recently officials have also begun abducting children born in violation of the one child policy.

Mosher concluded his testimony: First, China’s one-child policy constitutes the longest-running and most far-reaching violation of human rights the world has ever seen.

Four hundred million Chinese children are missing because of this policy.

Second, the one-child policy is coercive not by accident, but by design.
The abuses that we have talked about today are not occasional missteps by overzealous officials--as they are sometimes characterized by Chinese officials--but are the very lifeblood of the program.

The one-child policy, like all political campaigns of the Chinese Communist party, is coercive by virtue of its fines, its targets, its quotas, and by the extraordinary pressure that the highest levels of the Chinese government put on lower-level officials.
Third, the U.N. Population Fund has been complicit in China’s one-child policy from the first, not merely turning a blind eye to abuses, but facilitating them in various ways.

This is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the U.N. Population Fund’s “model county program,” where UNFPA trained officials oversee the enforcement of the one-child policy, and where abuses are rampant.
He called for the permanent defunding of the UNFPA.3 On December 31, 2011 the UNFPA joined with the National Working Committee on Children and Women under the State Council, the Ministry of the Health, the National Population and Family Planning Commission and China Family Planning Association in launching the seventh five year cycle of the China-UNPFA Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Program in the city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province the chosen model province for this cycle.
In testimony to the House Committee hearing Pastor Bob Fu founder of China Aid Association gave evidence that on 6 June 2012 local “family planning” officials and government officials in Changsha, Hunan province, dragged Ms. Cao Ruyi, who was five months pregnant, to a hospital, beat her, and were about to force an abortion on her.
However, due to the immediate advocacy of China Aid Association, especially a timely letter from Congressman Chris Smith to the Changsha government in Hunan province, as well as the efforts of the international community, Ms. Cao Ruyi and her unborn baby were spared this fate.4 Ms Cao susbsequently named her son, born 15 October 2012, Dahai, meaning “help from overseas”.5 In her thorough examination of sex selection abortion, Mara Hvistendahl makes the case that 3 http://archives.republicans.foreignaffairs.house.gov/112/HHRG-112-FA16-WState-MosherS-20120709.pdf 4 http://archives.republicans.foreignaffairs.house.gov/112/HHRG-112-FA16-WState-FuB-20120709.pdf 5 http://www.chinaaid.org/2013/03/cao-ruyi-whose-near-forced-abortion.html Australia's overseas aid and development assistance programSubmission 61 the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as well as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, has contributed to the proliferation of sex selection abortion in Asian countries including India, China and Nepal and the consequent skewed sex ratios that are posing serious threats to these nations wellbeing and stability.6 Recommendation 2: The United Nations Population Fund, International Planned Parenthood Federation and International Planned Parenthood Federation (South Asia) have been implicated in policies and practice involving coerced abortion and sex selection (female gendercide) abortions.
These organisations should not receive Australian overseas aid funding.

3.

FUNDING ABORTIONS DOES NOT HELP ACHIEVE DEVELOPMENT GOALS The justification for funding abortion through overseas aid is often linked to a neo- imperialist, Western view that there should be less (black, brown or yellow) people in developing countries.

Claims that legalising abortion reduces maternal mortality are without foundation.
6 Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection : Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, 2011 Australia's overseas aid and development assistance programSubmission 61 Countries with the most restrictive abortion laws such as Ireland, Poland, Chile and Malta have lower maternal mortality rates than comparable neighbouring countries.
Australian aid funds should be directed at positive measures to improve the health of women and their children not expended on abortions, which kill unborn children and harm, and sometimes kill, women.

Recommendation 3: All funding through Australian overseas aid of abortions or training in performing abortions should cease immediately.

Abortion takes the life of an unborn child and often harms and sometimes kills the mother.
Australian aid should be directed at positive measures to improve maternal and child health.

Australia's overseas aid and development assistance programSubmission 61