The United Nations shows no sign of relenting as the United States calls for it to drop funding for abortions from its COVID-19 response plan. The controversy centers around $120 million allocated to the UN Population Fund by the recently published Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP).

USAID’s Acting Administrator, John Barsa, called the GHRP “an affront to the autonomy of each society to determine its own national policies on health care” and suggested that the plan exploits the COVID-19 pandemic to force abortion services on countries and individuals with objections to such a practice.

Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen are all among the countries identified by the GHRP as major recipients of aid in the plan. Each of those countries also bans or restricts abortions on religious grounds. Their need for international assistance makes them particularly vulnerable to the pressure of aid given with the strings of cultural imperialism attached.

The GHRP lays out a multifaceted response to the global pandemic. In all, the plan allocates $6.71 billion to a multitude of programs covering in areas from sanitation to nutrition to security. Abortion is not the main thrust of the GHRP—funding allocated to the UN Population Fund makes up not quite 1.8% of the total costs proposed by the plan.

Still, to make the provision of abortion services an integral part of the world’s response to COVID-19 is an affront to the right of sovereign nations to take a pro-life stance, according to U.S. officials.

Many countries, both Muslim and Christian, are simultaneously in need of international aid to respond to COVID-19 and take a strong moral stance against abortion. The GHRP lumps funding for abortion in with the general COVID-19 response, putting the problems of food-insecurity and malnutrition on the same level as access to abortions.

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