Douglas Smith complains that Barack Obama has moved to “repeal by executive order the prohibition on using scarce federal dollars to fund groups that perform or promote abortions in foreign countries, otherwise known as the Mexico City Policy.”
I quite agree that the United States government should not be subsidizing abortions internationally, or at home. But that’s because I don’t think the United States government should give any money whatsoever in foreign aid, nor should it fund any health care domestically. But, so long as the federal government is going to fund welfare in and out of our boarders, there’s no good reason to exclude abortions.
Smith alleges that Obama’s policy is “anti-life.” But if Smith cares to glance at the widespread squaller of third-world nations, he might notice that forcing people to bring an embryo to term, when they cannot support a child and the attempt would only further impoverish them, is in fact the anti-life position. That doesn’t mean that the U.S. has a positive responsibility to fund welfare for the world’s poor, nor to ensure just laws in other nations that permit legal abortion, but it does mean that abortion funding should not be specifically targeted. It is no better or worse than other sorts of welfare funding.
Obama’s memo does not lead to the federal funding of international abortions. As the memo clearly states, such funding is illegal under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
The new policy rescinds a gag against speech, which prohibited entities funded by USAID from offering information or counseling about abortion, even if such services were funded by non-USAID money.
The question is to what extent can the President (originally Reagan) expand policy beyond the clear meaning of an existing statute (passed under Kennedy) to place limits upon the speech of foreigners.