In response to the coronavirus, the UN plan called “Global Humanitarian Response Plan”, to supply healthcare and food to needy countries, was hinged on the requirement that the recipient countries be required to provide abortion liberalization legislation before receiving the funding.

Since the UN emergency plan was not subject to deliberation by its member states, the bureaucrats working under the direction of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had slipped this qualifying provision into the plan apparently believing it either would not be noticed, or alternatively, would be ignored during the pandemic.

The U.S. did notice it. On May 18, 2020, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is responsible for foreign aid and development assistance, sent a letter to the Secretary General demanding the UN remove the abortion condition from the global coronavirus aid plan.

It is significant that in 2019, the U.S. gave $3.5 billion dollars in funding to the UN. The letter was an implicit threat that the U.S. could funnel its aid money elsewhere, rather than the UN, and increase its aid funding to other projects. Such a shift would have a serious effect on UN capacity and decrease its sphere of influence. The U.S. also could attract other member states, tired of suffering through UN conditionalities, to withdraw their support from the UN entirely.

The UN was built on the principle of the sovereign equality of each member state. That is, member states are supposed to set the agenda for the UN, which the bureaucrats are supposed to facilitate. Instead, the UN has degenerated into a monster that won’t keep within its limits, as apparent by the bureaucrats imposing abortion legalization on hapless dependant countries under the guise of pandemic relief.

The action of the bureaucrats is especially disturbing in that UN documents explicitly state that abortion legalization must be determined at the legislative level of member states, and that no UN treaty requires that abortion be implemented in member countries.

The UN bureaucrats under the Secretary General Antonio Guterres should not be allowed to override the principles of the UN, especially by capitalizing on the pandemic.

The U.S. government, by this May 18, 2020 letter, has sent a warning shot across the bow of the UN.