Loeffler, Colleagues Urge USAID to Prevent US from Funding Abortions, Abortion Advocacy Abroad
ATLANTA – U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) urged the Trump administration to prevent American taxpayer money from going to abortions and abortion advocacy abroad.
Loeffler joined U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) and U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rogers (Wash.-05) in sending a bicameral letter to the Acting Administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) John Barsa urging him to prevent American coronavirus relief funding from going toward pro-abortion lobbying or advocacy efforts in other countries via the United Nations (UN) in violation of the Siljander Amendment, which prevents taxpayer dollars from being used to lobby about abortion.
“We agree with you that the ‘UN should not use this crisis as an opportunity to advance access to abortion as an ‘essential service.’’ Your insistence that UN agreements and activities should be neutral on abortion is crucial to enforcing the Siljander amendment, so that the billions of US taxpayer dollars given annually to the UN are not used to lobby for abortion. To that end, we also urge additional action to protect US funds from being used by UN organizations to perform or promote abortions,” the members wrote.
“The UN’s COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan is only the latest example of the UN’s brazen imposition of abortion and a fictitious international right to abortion, which violates the sovereignty of its member states and UN conventions that affirm the right to life,” the members continued. “UN organizations that lobby for abortion include the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, the UN Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
“Therefore, we also urge additional action to protect US funds from being used by UN organizations to perform or promote abortions.”
Text of the letter can be found here. The letter is also signed by Senators Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).