In honor of International Women’s Day, President Joe Biden released a statement Tuesday to “recognize the achievements of women and girls in the United States and across the globe” and “recommit ourselves to the work that remains to deliver the full measure of equity, dignity, and opportunity due to all women and girls.” As part of his effort to “improve the status of women and girls” he cited his “whole-of-government effort to protect reproductive rights.” 

That effort to advance abortion was highlighted by the White House as they touted their National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality citing the administration’s efforts to fight the Texas heartbeat law that bars abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected at about six weeks. They referenced the $2 million from the Department of Health and Human Services in Title X grant funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, to “protect reproductive health care and ensure access to quality family-planning services.” 

Another example they provided of working for women’s equality was revoking “the Mexico City policy — the ‘global gag’ rule — that prohibited federal funding for foreign nongovernmental organizations providing abortion counseling or referrals.” Revoking the Mexico City Policy means taxpayer funded abortion overseas, a position that 73% of Americans oppose, according to recent Marist polling on the issue. 

They also highlighted the Department of Justice filing “an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, arguing that Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban violates the Constitution.” In that brief, DOJ lawyers argued that “pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood continue to affect a woman’s social, economic, and personal trajectory,” and stated that for 50 years, “‘[t]he ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control’ the timing and number of children they bear.”

Many female legal scholars disagreed with this reasoning in another amicus brief in the Dobbs case led by law professors Teresa Collett, Helen Alvaré and legal scholar Erika Bachiochi. Their brief stated that “data regarding women’s participation in the labor market and entrepreneurial activities, as well as their educational accomplishments, professional engagement, and political participation, reveals virtually no consistent correlation with abortion rates or ratios.”

They added that the data “suggest some correlation between abortion, the feminization of poverty, and women’s declining levels of happiness, including fewer and less satisfying long-term committed relationships with partners and the birth of fewer children than women desire by the end of their reproductive lives.”

For International Women’s Day, the president also announced that he would more than double the $1.2 billion spent on “foreign assistance programs that promote gender equality worldwide” to $2.6 billion. The $1.2 billion slated for these programs in the FY 2022 budget includes $56 million to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for “gender equality and women’s empowerment, including gender-based violence and discrimination; maternal and reproductive health including HIV prevention; adolescent and youth services, including comprehensive sexuality education.”

When the Trump administration announced their decision to cut funding to the UNFPA in 2017, the State Department explained in a memorandum that “the Chinese Government, at both central and provincial levels, continues to place financial and administrative penalties on individuals who exceed the birth limits, or otherwise violate regulations promulgated under the amended law.” The memorandum also pointed out that “China's population-control policy relies on measures such as mandatory pregnancy examinations and coercive abortions and sterilizations.”

The State Department concluded that “while there is no evidence that UNFPA directly engages in coercive abortions or involuntary sterilizations in China, the agency continues to partner with the NHFPC [the country’s family planning commission] on family planning, and thus can be found to support, or participate in the management of China's coercive policies.” UNFPA denies that it is involved in China’s coerced abortions or sterilizations.

While the Biden administration touted their funding for UNFPA as helping advance women’s equality, China’s policy of birth limits — implemented by the agency that UNFPA partners with — has resulted in men outnumbering women by tens of millions in China as families aborted millions of unborn baby girls, opting to have sons under the restrictive one-child policy that was updated in 2015 to allow families to have two children and again last year to allow three children. 

China’s restrictive policies have also hurt women in other ways. The Wall Street Journal noted last month that a recent effort in China to reduce its high abortion rate came with an acknowledgment from Chinese demographers that “the wide use of abortions, with many young women having repeat procedures, had harmful effects on fertility.” China’s infertility rate is reportedly at 18%, compared with the global average of 15%.