For the third year in a row, President Donald Trump has ordered the defunding of the UNFPA, a United Nations population control agency which promotes abortions worldwide.

In 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order defunding the UN population group because it pushes abortions on other countries and has worked with China for decades to implement its forced abortion population control policies. He renewed the order again in 2018 and has renewed the order again this year.

In the announcement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined that “China’s family planning policies still involve the use of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization practices,” conditions that under US law require an end to funding, a State Department spokeswoman said.

He said that the UN Population Fund’s public documents state that “it partners on family planning with the Chinese government agency responsible for these coercive policies.”

Trump’s decision means the pro-abortion UN group will not receive $32.5 million in taxpayer funds to push population control around the world. Pompeo’s office indicated the funds will be diverted and will instead be used for legitimate family planning and women’s health initiatives that do not involve abortion.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has a long history of supporting China’s population control regime.

According to information from he Family Research Council, both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush cut off funding to the UNFPA during their administrations. In 1993, President Bill Clinton resumed funding for UNFPA, but for fiscal year 1999 signed a foreign aid appropriations bill that zeroed out funding for UNFPA. Funding to UNFPA was again completely cut off under President George W. Bush.

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In 2008, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell explained: “UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion. Therefore, it is not permissible to continue funding UNFPA at this time.”

President Obama resumed U.S. taxpayer funding of UNFPA in 2009. From 2009 to 2016, over $300 million was appropriated for UNFPA.

One pro-life leader applauded President Trump for defunding the UNFPA.

“Not only has President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, he’s modernized it by applying it to all foreign health assistance programs,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “For nearly a decade under President Obama, Americans have funded UNFPA, which has a long history of involvement in China’s brutal birth limitation policy – enforcement of which routinely includes the atrocity of forced abortions. Thanks to President Trump, the Secretary of State is directed to ensure Americans are no longer complicit in violating the dignity of women and children overseas. No longer will abortion be a top U.S. export.”

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, previously told LifeNews:

“UNFPA has been found to be complicit with coercive population control in China in the past, and I have no doubt that any unbiased investigation would find them complicit again. I have long advocated for the defunding of UNFPA.”

Littlejohn said she also would like to see a new investigation of UNFPA’s work in China. She referred to a 2002 investigation by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell that found UNFPA was complicit with Chinese officials in coercive methods of family planning.

“I believe that any independent, unbiased investigation into UNFPA’s activities in China will lead to the inescapable conclusion that they are complicit with China’s population control practices, which include forced abortion and involuntary sterilization,” she continued. “To the extent that the global community is funding the UNFPA, the blood of Chinese women and babies is on our hands.”