Trump cuts funds to UN agency over birth control

The Trump administration has said it was cutting off US funding to the United Nations agency for reproductive health, accusing the agency of supporting population control programmes in China that include coercive abortion.

By halting assistance to the UN Population Fund, the administration is following through on promises to let socially conservative policies that President Donald Trump embraced in his campaign determine the way the US government operates and conducts itself in the world.

Though focused on forced abortion — a concept opposed by liberals and conservatives alike — the move to invoke the “KempKasten amendment” was sure to be perceived as a gesture to antiabortion advocates and other conservative interests.

The UN fund will lose $32.5 million in funding from the 2017 budget, the State Department said, with funds shifted to similar programs at the US Agency for International Development. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the UN fund would also lose out on tens of millions of additional dollars it has typically received from the US in “noncore” funds.

Under a three-decade-old law, the US is barred from funding organizations that aid or participate in forced abortion of involuntary sterilization. It’s up to each administration to determine which organizations meet that condition. The UN Population