As U.S. President George Bush continues an historic four-country trip around Asia, some surprisingly strange bedfellows are joining together to urge the president’s condemnation of vast human-rights and reproductive violations in China, which he will visit over the weekend.

The Population Research Institute, a Virginia-based pro-life organization, praised New York senator Hillary Clinton for a November 10th letter, in which she urged the president to raise the issues of sterilization and forced abortion--part of the country’s severe population control program--during his Chinese visit.

Introduced in 1979, China holds to a much-criticized 1-child policy, enforced through what many call, coercive and abusive practices which run contrary to Catholic teaching and natural human dignity.

Steven Mosher, president of the PRI said Tuesday that, "I am glad that Senator Clinton has raised the profile of this official, systematic abuse of the rights of Chinese women and their husbands.” "Although Sen.

Clinton generally takes the wrong side when it comes to the life issues,” he said, “we are very pleased that she has not remained silent when it comes to this persecution of Chinese mothers as so many feminist and so-called pro-choice leaders have.” Noting however, that Clinton supports U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which, he pointed out, subsidizes China's population control apparatus, Mosher called on the senator to bring her policy in line with her rhetoric.Nevertheless, Joseph A. D'Agostino, Vice President of Communications at PRI, was grateful for Clinton’s words, recalling that, "too often, discussion of the Communist Chinese government's human rights abuses includes religious and political persecution, but fails to mention the one-child policy, which restricts the rights of every family in China.”

He also expressed gratitude “for President Bush's decision earlier this year to withhold U.S. funding from UNFPA. We hope that President Bush, Sen. Clinton, and others will continue to press this issue and propose specific incentives to persuade China to change her oppressive policies."