OTHER VIEWS Trump takes on UN

Across the globe, women and girls trapped by poverty and war struggle to get health care when they are pregnant and contraceptives when they don’t want to become pregnant. Many face violence in refugee camps, endure female genital mutilation, risk being married off as children or lack things as basic as sanitary pads. The United Nations Population Fund, which subsists on the voluntary contributions of UN member nations, has been in existence for nearly 50 years to tackle these and other problems.

In order to make an empty, symbolic statement about China’s coercive family-planning program, the U.S. is pulling money that goes to efforts like this: Maintaining the only maternity hospital in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 7,100 babies have been delivered since 2013.

The U.S. funding also supports reproductive health care (excluding abortion), gender-based violence prevention and counselling, and prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections in that camp and others.

In Syria, U.S. funds go to mobile clinics, training of staff, and essential medicines and health-care supplies in areas where existing health facilities have been damaged and resources are already strained by an influx of internally displaced people. Funds also support 42 health facilities and 32 mobile teams in 10 Syrian governorates.

There are plenty of ways for the U.S. to limit how American aid dollars are spent — without slashing all funding from organizations working in desperately poor, underserved and conflict-torn areas of the world.

Los Angeles Times