Washington D.C., Jan 29, 2021 / 06:30 am (CNA).- On Thursday, President Joe Biden struck down bans on U.S. funding of international pro-abortion groups—an act that could have far-reaching consequences.
Biden on Thursday issued a sweeping presidential memorandum on “Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad,” repealing the Mexico City Policy and the Trump administration’s expansion of it.
However, what is the Mexico City Policy, and why is the repeal of it so significant?
The Mexico City Policy was first instituted in 1984 by President Reagan. It is named for the location of the UN population conference at which it was announced. The policy has been rescinded by Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama, and now Biden; it was reinstated by Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Trump during their presidential terms.
Under the policy, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cannot distribute family planning funds to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or promote abortions.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who has served as co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus for decades, was in office when the policy was first instituted.
He told CNA that existing policy—the Helms Amendment—had prohibited direct funding of abortions abroad, but stronger pro-life funding protections were still required.
“And the accounting trick that the pro-abortion groups were doing was that they would take the all of the U.S. funding and then tell us our money wasn’t being used to pay for abortion,” he said. “And then they would just fund abortions-on-demand, however many they wanted to do, and lobby for it.”
The Mexico City Policy, he said, “was all about saying if we care enough about the precious lives of unborn children who are going to be dismembered or chemically poisoned by an organization,” then “we’re not going to let bookkeeping tricks and accounting methods prevent us from as much protection as we can possibly provide.”
Many international pro-abortion groups that have partnered with the U.S. in the past—such as Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation—aggressively promote abortion in developing countries.
“It is unrelenting,” Smith said of abortion advocacy by certain NGOs. “A lot of countries are pro-life, particularly in Africa and Latin America, and, sadly, we’re being forced to subsidize the lobbying and the performance of abortion by these groups.”
These groups work with multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and African Union to promote abortions in the developing world, he said. As an example, he noted that one NGO that received U.S. assistance wrote legislation in Kenya authorizing legal abortion.
The Mexico City Policy originally applied to around $600 million of U.S. international family planning funding. Critics call it the “global gag rule,” alleging that it silences recipients from referring for abortions or advocating for legal abortion.
However, beginning in 2017, the Trump administration not only reinstated the policy, but it also extended to more than $8 billion in global health assistance.
As pro-abortion groups withdrew from partnership with the U.S. over the pro-life requirements, their funding shortfall was not insignificant. The International Planned Parenthood Federation estimated in 2017 it would lose $100 million annually in funding, while Marie Stopes International estimated an $80 million funding shortfall.
Critics of the policy alleged that the pro-life restrictions were so broad they would hurt important global health initiatives such as AIDS relief. They argued that if NGOs forfeited U.S. foreign aid over the abortion restrictions, and the U.S. could not find suitable replacement partners, then there could be significant gaps in critical health care.
In August, a federal report found that the “vast majority” of U.S. partners in global health assistance accepted the new pro-life policies instituted by the Trump administration. For those which did not accept, either an alternative health provider, foreign governments, or donors stepped in to fill health care gaps.
Smith formerly chaired the House global health subcommittee, and in 2018 he authored a five-year extension of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He affirmed the conclusion that there were no significant gaps in health care as a result of the policy.
“So there wasn’t a single dollar cut for any health initiative—not one. It was redirected, but in most cases it was accepted,” Smith said.
“The issue is, abortion is not health care,” he said. “It is a very violent deed, and we don’t want complicity in global abortion.”
The Trump administration also applied funding restrictions to multilateral organizations because of abortion lobbying or alleged involvement in abortions.
In 2019, the Trump administration cut funding for the Organization of American States (OAS) because of its lobbying for abortion. In 2017, it stopped funding the UN’s population fund (UNFPA) because of the fund’s partnership with China on family planning—and alleged complicity in forced abortions and sterilizations under China’s two-child policy.
On Thursday, President Biden issued a sweeping order that repealed the Mexico City Policy and restored funding to UNFPA. He instructed federal agencies to begin reaching out to global health partners, to inform them that the previous restrictions on abortion performance, advocacy, and lobbying are no longer in place.
“Now more money will be flowing to the NGOs that so aggressively promote the destruction of innocent human life,” Smith said.
In addition, on Thursday Biden instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services—Xavier Becerra has been nominated for the position but not yet confirmed—to review the Trump administration’s “Protect Life Rule.”
That rule applied to the Title X program, set up in 1970 to subsidize family planning and contraception. The Trump administration required Title X grant recipients to not refer for abortions or be co-located with abortion clinics. The original law that created Title X said that funding could not go to “programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, withdrew from the Title X program in 2019 rather than comply with the new requirements. It forfeited an estimated $60 million annually in Title X grants by doing so.
Biden said the new prohibition on abortion referrals “puts women’s health at risk by making it harder for women to receive complete medical information.”
The idea of the Protect Life Rule was similar to the Mexico City Policy, Smith said: to ensure tax dollars don’t fund clinics where abortions are also being performed.
“We’re supporting the organization and, in this case, it’s under the same roof where babies are being dismembered or chemically poisoned,” he said.
The Biden administration is also withdrawing from the Geneva Declaration, a statement signed by the U.S. and 31 other countries in October stating that abortion is not an international human right.
Biden’s support for abortion—after he once supported the Mexico City Policy in 1984 while a senator—is “tragic,” Smith said.
“I’ve been in the pro-life movement for almost half a century, 48 years. This is tragic that a man who purported to be so pro-life—even during the campaign and then gave it up under pressure—will now become the most aggressive promoter of abortion on the face of the earth.”
“It was a core conviction, and you shredded your core conviction for political expediency. That, to me, is tragic.”
[…]
The party of death will not rest until every sweet, innocent little child is disposed of before he or she (yes, you heard me; *he* or *she*) has the chance to draw a breath.
Analogically we may compare Heinrich Himmler, former Catholic, chicken farmer who espoused the Gottgläubig movement [indeterminate belief in god] and driving force of the Holocaust, the murder of undesirables, thought a threat to German purity and burden to the economy, to Joseph ‘Joe’ Biden former Catholic, car salesman who espouses nominal Catholicism and the driving force of America’s Abortion industry for the murder undesirables, predominantly pre natal infants, but including post partum survivors who pose a threat to the economy [as argued by Party Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin] and an inconvenience to mothers, now in Party terminology called birthers.
Analogy is never a perfect comparison, but there are similarities. Would the reader not agree?
In terms of essence, yes, Fr. Peter, but not in terms of volume.
Himmler, the chicken farmer, and his quotidian murderers were responsible for the deaths of a mere 50 or 60 million civilians and combatants.
That’s approximately as many deaths as are recorded each *year* around the world now.
So Himmler, as thoroughly despicable as he was, wouldn’t be worthy to loose the sandal strap of chickens*** Biden or Pelosi — or Obama or Schumer or any of the rest of the murder-glutted Democratic ilk — when it comes to slaughtering innocent people.
And, needless to say, there’s enough blood guilt to spill over onto all the Catholics who have voted for the great Democratic holocaust, the most horrific scourge to beset humanity in all of our sordid history.
Bidencalls himself Catholic?He is committing Mortal sin by going to Communion while by agreeing on abortion!He dosn’t seem to care one iota about this and keeps going to Holy Mass!He is in mortal sin and I guess, agrees with it.He needs prayers.
It won’t stop with the unborn; imagine three or four orderlies who have been given their instructions regarding your future; you struggle in your aged and/or diseased ridden state but you cannot overpower against them as they hold down your limbs and insert the pill under your tongue.
The state has decided.
I agree with Fr. Morello’s statement.
I pray for this man since he is closing in on the eventual day when his natural life here on earth will be over. I pray that he will meet a most merciful God but I know that this same God is all Just as well. I suspect that God will ask him, “Where was your mercy toward those lives I had created?”.
What more does Biden have to do before Rome says enough!. There is no point in the pope condemning abortion in an obscure speech but then publicly support Biden and Pelosi. Actions speek louder than words.
Why is it that, when the Biden White House gives us a “photo op” of his signing an executive order to kill the unborn, there never are any children in the picture to witness this historic event? Just asking.
Right on!!!
The almost complete lack of any meaningful response, even rhetorical, from the hierarchy of the Church to this all-out war on Christian morality, led partly by self-professed Catholics, does not merely indict, but convicts those who have completely abdicated their responsibility. The judgement of history will be justifiably severe. It will pale in comparison to judgement of God. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to remind the incredibly complacent bureaucrats who hold positions of authority in the Church that they will soon have to give an account for what they did and did not do during their lives. Perhaps, some are for all practical purposes out of reach, but others could be jolted out of their slumber.
Good points, and this absence of appropriate leadership and response exposes the deep rot of corruption in the hierarchy. I honestly don’t know how the church will move forward in the faith with leaders who have no spiritual insight into themselves or the great issues of the day. Is there hope for renewal and restoration or will we need to abandon ship and salvage what we can?
Tony W. – your 7/9/22 @6:17 – well said.
All that you say is true. Reflect for a moment on what consequences that entails. The “lack of any meaningful response” from the “hierarchy of the Church” over the past 50 years renders them guilty of formal cooperation in the horrendous mortal sin and crime of the murder of 60 million innocent babies in the United States alone by their silence and refusal to act. Their sin and crime invokes their latae sententiae excommunication from the Church, including loss of their episcopal offices. On what basis, therefore, can they be obeyed since they are no longer members of the Church?
Friday July 8 – “Biden to sign abortion executive order in response to Dobbs.”
And on Sunday, July 10, if he’s in D.C., he will receive Holy Communion with the blessing of Cardinal Gregory (and the Pope) – WHEREVER he is he will go to Communion.
Meanwhile – efforts to abolish the Latin Mass are ongoing from Rome with the blessing of the Pope, the Pope grants a public audience to one of the must virulent American ‘catholic’ supporters of abortion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Pope has a very public sit-down with fellow Jesuit Fr. James Martin, patron saint of the lgbtq folks,
yada yada yada.
And at some point when we regular Catholics – including us ‘restorationists’ go to Sunday Mass, there will be a 2nd collection for ‘Peter’s Pence’, aka the Pope.
Speaking for JUST MYSELF – Forget it.
I will continue to go to Holy Mass either at the Novus Ordo Service in Augusta or the Latin Mass in Lewiston every week and Holy days, and hopefully a few extra days per week, I will be as generous as I can be in the weekly collection, I will give to ‘Wounded Warriors’ and to the Edmundites in Selma Alabama, where they have been since 1937, but to ‘Peter’s Pence’ – forget it.
History teaches us that reform in the Catholic Church starts at the very lowest level – us common every-day church goers, and we start with fasting and prayer.
At what point does Biden’s archbishop in DC create scandal by not cracking down on him?
“Biden, a self-proclaimed catholic……”.
Reads better CWR, no?
There’s your “man of character,” Cardinal Tobin; the one you “can really talk with,” Cardinal Gregory; the one who “is seamlessly pro-life,” Cardinal Cupich. Nice job, Cardinals. Well done, your eminences. Way to go, you who wear red to signify that you are willing to suffer martyrdom for the faith.