Today the State Department informed the Senate that the United States was terminating its association with the UN Population Fund:

The State Department said on Monday it was ending U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund, the international body’s agency focused on family planning as well as maternal and child health in more than 150 countries.

In a letter to U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, the State Department said it was dropping the funding because the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

The cut marks U.S. President Donald Trump’s first move to curtail funding for the United Nations and is likely to raise further questions about how deep those cuts will eventually go throughout the organization, where the United States is the top donor.

Thank you @StateDept for stopping our tax dollars from going to @UNFPA which supports/participates in China's forced abortion programs! 💵💵💵 pic.twitter.com/QhWaeA26s6

— Susan B. Anthony List (@SBAList) April 4, 2017

Contrary to what a lot of people are saying this is not new. Bush cut funding in 2002 for exactly the same reason. The UNFPA is inextricably involved with Chinese officials who oversee forced abortion and coerced sterilization programs. And it isn’t only China, wherever you find government coercion of women to have abortions or to be sterilized you will find the UNFPA.

Extricating the United States from funding many of the UN’s programs has nothing to do with the budget and everything to do with human decency. With this action and the re-imposition of the Mexico City Rule Trump has taken a huge step in getting the US government out of the abortion and sterilization business.