Among other actions Tuesday, the House voted 216-211 to sustain a policy under which recent Republican presidents have withheld funds from the UN Population Fund. President Bush last year denied the UNFPA $34 million out of some $450 million the United States contributed to international family planning programs. "Since 1979, the UNFPA has been the chief apologist for China's coercive one-child-per-couple policy," said Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.). Phyllis Oakley, chair of the U.S. Committee for UNFPA, said failure of the United States to fund UNFPA, which has family planning programs in more than 140 countries, "means more unnecessary and unsafe abortions, increased cases of HIV/AIDS, more girls suffering from fistulas and female genital mutilation and more women dying in childbirth." In its version of the bill last week, the Senate approved an amendment by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that would have ended the Bush administration's policy of banning family planning aid to health centers abroad that promote or perform abortions. The White House warned that the president would veto any State Department bill that contained either the Boxer provision or language in the House bill that made it more difficult to restrict funding to the UN agency.

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