Congresswoman misleads about UNFPA's funding to abortion group

(C-Fam, Washington, D.C.) At a hearing on UN reform in the U.S. House [...] Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) gave false information about the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and abortion.

She told the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Intelligence Subcommittee that “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.”

Dean held up a UNFPA birthing supplies kit and said, “The [Trump] administration should be ashamed” for cutting funds to the agency. UNFPA reported a loss of $377 million in canceled U.S. government grants.

Dean’s comments echo UNFPA talking points: “UNFPA does not fund or perform abortions.”

However, a single example proves these to be false claims by UNFPA and Congresswoman Dean.

In 2017, UNFPA provided funding to the abortion group Ipas in order to train abortionists and to provide abortions in refugee camps in Bangladesh, where Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar were living. Five years later, in 2022, Ipas continued to provide “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services” in partnership with UNFPA at 49 locations.

In Bangladesh, abortion is illegal, but an unusual loophole exists in the law: a first-trimester abortion conducted without a prior pregnancy test is referred to as “menstrual regulation,” and is legal. An annual report from UNFPA’s Bangladesh office claims that in 2021, “UNFPA-supported midwives…conducted 2,122 menstrual regulation procedures.”

Legal technicalities aside, the procedures are identical apart from the pregnancy test, and Ipas refers to “menstrual regulation (as abortion is known in Bangladesh),” leaving no ambiguity.

However, UNFPA’s promotion and provision of abortion internationally extends far beyond Bangladesh.  Its procurement platform, the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, offers manual vacuum aspirators, which are used to perform surgical abortions, as well as misoprostol and mifepristone, the drugs used in medication abortions...

Read entire article at C-Fam.