Why President Trump Must Defund This U.N. Agency Once Again

As the new Trump administration proposes sweeping cuts to the federal budget, progressives are begging the president-elect to continue subsidizing the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

But considering the UNFPA’s dark history of sponsoring draconian population control policies, slashing U.S. funding should be a top priority of the Trump administration, especially as fertility rates decline to sub-replacement levels and the “population bomb” becomes an obsolete doomsday prophecy.

Trump cut UNFPA funding in 2017, following a long tradition of Republicans since Ronald Reagan who have regarded the UNFPA as unqualified to receive U.S. government support under the 1985 Kemp-Kasten Amendment. This ruling prohibits U.S. funding for “any organization or program which, as determined by the president of the United States, supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

The Democrats have restored UNFPA funding each time they’ve returned to the White House since Kemp-Kasten. When the Biden administration announced it would reinstate U.S. support in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the UNFPA is “essential to the health and well-being of women around the world.”

While the UNFPA prides itself as a champion of women’s health and “reproductive rights and choices,” its history is tainted by sponsorship of the most egregious violations of human dignity.

Founded in 1969, the UNFPA has spearheaded the global campaign to reduce fertility, particularly in developing countries. The U.S. has served as one of its largest annual donor countries, except under recent Republican administrations.

Population control programs backed by the UNFPA, euphemistically described as “family planning,” have often been coercive and tyrannical. It supported China’s brutal one-child policy, which terrorized the Chinese population with forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations for over three decades.

In 2004, then-UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid said, “We endorse the one-child policy in China,” arguing that UNFPA family planning programs helped reduce China’s abortion rate.

Because of the one-child policy and the Chinese cultural preference for sons, China faces a massive sex ratio imbalance, with nearly 35 million more men than women.

In 1983, China’s National Family Planning Commission Chairman Qian Xinzhong was presented with the first United Nations Population Award, along with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who enacted similarly coercive population policies in India — at the behest of the Rockefeller and Ford foundations.  

The old-guard “Rockefeller Republicans” of the “eastern establishment,” such as Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, were enthusiastic proponents of population control, including through the UNFPA.

In 1974, Kissinger penned a classified memo titled National Security Study Memorandum 200, which argued that suppressing developing countries’ populations was necessary for U.S. national security and economic interests.

He recommended that these population activities should be carried out in partnership with the UNFPA, the WHO, UNICEF and the World Bank, and his memo even considered withholding food aid to developing countries that refused to implement family planning programs.

To downplay accusations of imperialist motivations for U.S. population policies directed at developing countries, Kissinger suggested “repeatedly asserting” that such policies are concerned with “the right of the individual couple to determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of children.”

Machiavellian language wrapped up in colorful appeals to human rights can often disguise nefarious and genocidal intentions.

The Biden administration supported the UNFPA with nearly $112 million of U.S. taxpayer money. In 2025, The Trump administration must not overlook this important budget cut, especially with pro-natal voices such as Elon Musk involved in the administration.

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It is not the threat of overpopulation, but rather depopulation, that could undermine economic prosperity and imperil the future of civilization this century. As the working-age population shrinks, countries may experience a dearth of resources to provide health care, pensions and other services to a significantly larger retirement-age population.

The U.S. government should permanently cease funding the UNFPA due to its controversial activities promoting neo-Malthusianism and coercive anti-natal policies that jeopardize human dignity, freedom and the progress of civilization.

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Aidan Grogan is a history PhD student at Liberty University, a contributor with Young Voices and the donor communications manager at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). His work has been published in The American Spectator, The Washington Examiner and AIER’s The Daily Economy. Follow him on X @AidanGrogan.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.