“It is about the Population Research Institute, a small, aggressive, anti-family-planning group that was instrumental in getting President Bush to refuse to release a $34-million appropriation to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). To the Virginia-based institute, USAID, UNFPA and every other major international family planning organization is the enemy of goodness and light. The view is not surprising, considering the extremist religious elements that founded and make up the group. What’s amazing, though, is that this niggling little group of fanatics has the ear of the president .… When a group like the Population Research Institute has a seat at the table, reasonable minds are elbowed out.”
Robyn Blumner, “On population policy, the president heeds a small group of fanatics,” St. Peterburg Times, 4 August 2002
“By 2025, world population will be below 7.5 billion, according to the UNPD’s low-variant projection, and just over 7.8 billion in 2050, and slowing. [T]he racist and abusive population-control ideologies of the UK government should be examined.”
PRI’s Scott Weinberg in The Guardian, 26 August 2002
“The story of Guy and the Population Research Institute demonstrates how small advocacy groups, with the backing of more powerful interests inside and outside the government, can influence American policy. PRI, a nonprofit with only six employees, is a longtime critic of the United Nations and of family planning programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development .… PRI officials defend their research and, in fund-raising letters, boast of their role in Bush’s decision. Spokesman Jonathan Scott Weinberg said Sihui county officials who denied the existence of a UNFPA desk were ‘definitely changing their story’ and that Guy ‘absolutely’ stood by her work.”
Jodi Enda, “Small advocacy group influences American policy,” Knight Ridder, 22 September 2002
“Scott Weinberg, director of governmental affairs for the Population Research Institute of Front Royal, Va., which raised the issue with an undercover investigation, yesterday called the decision ‘sound policy’ that follows the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which prevents US public money from going into a group that ‘supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.’ That 1985 law grew out of a Reagan administration ruling a year earlier, known as the ‘Mexico City Policy,’ barring US funds for any foreign organization that promotes or performs abortions. Weinberg said his group of investigators, who worked covertly in China, ‘documented forced abortion, forced sterilization, destruction of homes for noncompliance, and imprisonment for noncompliance.’”
John Donnelly, “US to withhold $34m in UN family-plan aid,” Boston Globe, 23 July 2002
“China’s population policy has already resulted in 5 to 10 million abortions, and 80 to 90 percent of the aborted fetuses were girls, according to Stephen [sic] Mosher of the Population Research Institute.”
Ellen K. Johnson, “Six Billion’s a Crowd?” The American Feminist, Spring/Summer 2002
“The Population Research Institute first investigated UNFPA-supported forced-sterilization campaigns in Peru in 1998 and again in 1999. Victims of forced sterilization testified that women in Peru routinely are treated like animals by family-planning cadres, called ‘beasts’ and ‘dogs’ and forcibly sterilized.”
Steve Mosher, “Bush Stops Funds for UNFPA Abuses,” Insight magazine, 19 August 2002
“Rep. Christopher Smith (R., N.J.), one of Congress’ most outspoken abortion opponents, arranged for Guy and Mosher to testify before Congress. Smith … said he supported Mosher and his organization’s research. ‘Steve Mosher broke the story on forced abortion in China in the ’80s, and no one believed him then,’ Smith said. ‘He is just as much a truth-teller now as he was then. And he cares deeply about the Chinese people.’”
Jodi Enda, “How a desk led U.S. to cut U.N. funds,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 September 2002
“The Population Research Institute, which sparked President Bush’s decision to cut off millions of dollars to the United Nations family planning program, is run by a man who has made a career of attacking population control measures. Steven Mosher, the institute’s president, said his opposition to population control stemmed from his work in China in 1979, when he was a doctoral student in anthropology from Stanford University. While he was there, China established its restrictive family-planning system, and Mosher said he witnessed forced abortions. ‘I left with the cries of women ringing in my ears,’ Mosher said.”
Jodi Enda, “PRI leader makes a career out of attacking population control,” Knight Ridder, 22 September 2002
“Population Research Institute of Fort [sic] Royal, Va., an antiabortion group, has taken the lead in criticizing family planning organizations, saying that some groups coerce women into having abortions.”
John Donnelly, “Maternal health survey faults cutbacks,” Boston Globe, 26 September 2002
