BISMARCK – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) joined a bicameral letter led by Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) to the Acting Administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) John Barsa urging him to protect American taxpayer dollars during COVID-19 from funding pro-abortion lobbying or advocacy efforts in other countries via the United Nations (UN).
”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.”
Senators Cramer and Lankford were joined on the letter by Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), Mike Braun (R-IN), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rob Portman (R-OH), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tim Scott (R-SC), and Jerry Moran (R-KS).
Click here to read the letter.