Political Quotes

“I will just take a minute, Mr. Chairman, because the hour is late. The problem with the United Nations Population Fund activities in China is that it strictly adheres to Chinese law. Chinese law is a one-child-per-couple policy, and it has a direct result in the clinics and in the programs that are run in the approximately 30 counties that UNFPA oversees or has programs in or projects. Each and every one of those adhere to this one-child-per- couple policy. Yes, they may say you can choose to be sterilized or have an IUD insertion, one or the other, but you must have it. It is compulsory. It is involuntary. So they enforce the involuntariness, the compulsory nature, but they may give a choice as to what method a person may be able to follow. That is not voluntary. I would also point out that, for 30 years, representatives of the UNFPA have said publicly again and again and again that the Chinese program is ``totally voluntary.'' Nothing I would submit to my good friend and colleague from New York could be further from the truth. There was nothing voluntary about this horrific program where women are treated like chattel. As a Member of Congress, I have held 27 hearings as chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Foreign Affairs Committee--27 hearings just on China. We heard from numerous women who were forcibly aborting. They told the story about how it was told to them--that this was a voluntary abortion. They were coerced.…”