Abortion Policy: Obama to end federal funds for abortions
Officials: Obama to reverse abortion policy. President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
January 23, 2009 WASHINGTON – In a long-expected move, President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
Liberal groups welcomed the decision while abortion rights foes criticized the president. Known as the “Mexico City policy,” the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since GOP President Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. President Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but President George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.
The policy bans U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of U.S. Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. It is also known as the “global gag rule,” because it prohibits taxpayer funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.
The Democratic official and senior U.S. official who disclosed the plans did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to pre-empt Obama’s announcement.
Obama was expected to sign the executive order at a low-key event, one day after the 36th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.
The move was not a surprise as both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away with the gag rule during the presidential campaign. Clinton is to visit the U.S. Agency for International Development, through which much U.S. foreign aid is disbursed, later on Friday.
Obama has spent his first days in office systematically signing executive orders reversing Bush administration policies on issues ranging from foreign policy to government operations. But, save for ending the ban, Obama has largely refrained from wading into ideological issues, perhaps to avoid being tagged a traditional partisan from the outset after his campaign promises to change “business as usual” in the often partisan-gridlocked capital.
Rather, Obama has chosen to focus initially on issues in which there is consensus across the political spectrum and support from the public, such as closing the prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to making government documents more accessible.
In a move related to the lifting of the abortion ban, Obama also is expected to restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) at his earliest opportunity, probably in the next budget. Both he and Clinton made this a campaign issue.
The Bush administration had barred U.S. money from going to the fund, contending that work in China supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. UNFPA has vehemently denied that it does.
Organizations that had pressed Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.
“Women’s health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama’s actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don’t have access to family planning,” said Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, an advocacy group.
Anti-abortion groups criticized the move.
“President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
The following are just comments, not from the author of this article. Please leave your views afterwards:
CHANGE: Your tax dollars will be used again to murder babies around the world.
Not too much hope for the babies though.
Why are we funding abortion with our tax dollars? They want to kill their babies let them pay for it….so now all you christians who voted for this guy, are you proud of him?
Why not spend the our tax dollars, the same money, on making adoptions easier and even orphanages better funded as well as educating kids better about the long term consequences of teen motherhood etc? Think what you will but we were a nation that did everything possible to save lives when I was a child and now we are not. Killing more children seems high on the agenda right up there with all of our critical world melting down policies. When a person, nation or world promotes any killing of any children for any reason we are in very big trouble. To save a mother’s life they can often deliver the child live as well but live birth abortions is simply murder of a child.
Thanks American voters. Aren’t you proud of your new president. We are going to pay for abortions in other countrys and terrorists are going to be released here in the U.S. Let us Pray for our country.
Why cant other countries pay for their own abortions? Why do i have to pay for it??? Whether you agree w/abortion or not, our money should stay HERE, taking care of our own problems.
How can anyone say they are Christian, and support abortion. The truth about this man is coming. America is going fall because of this man.
Instead of using tax payers’ extra money to fund these programs that are so morally and ethically sickening, why is our money not going towards the “trillion dollar deficits” that Obama has promised are in our future? It is ludicrous that we should be funneling money into these things when our own nation is in such financial and ethical troubles, right now.
very very sad that our money will go to destroy life,so i guess give with one hand (pull out of iraq) and take with the other.well we voted for him and now we have to live with it…so so sad…i knowobama is pro choice…but these people choose not to use protection…even those that r raped can have the kids and give them away if they don’t want them…i didn’t agree to this…grrrr….macain wouldn’t have done this but he w’d have stayed in iraq still getting Americans killed,it’s all so difficult to choose well….Anyway God is still gonna deliver us one day…someday…
The political win-win thing to do would be to end the ban but cut all funding. That way he makes the pro-choice people happy and budget cut people happy at the same time. If only it worked like that.
When you mess with life, God’s life, you will be in trouble. This begins the downwrd spiral now for this President and this bad decicion. A “Christian” who does not believe in the sanctity of life is not really a Christian. Remember, Christian means Christ like.
why on earth would you be proud of being a democrat on a topic like this. So as a democrat, you don’t mind your hard earned tax dollars going to fund foreign abortion/abortion groups etc. There are plenty of U.S. things our tax dollars could be better spent on, like fixing social security for one example. YTASS1, you’re an idiot. Rape is rape no matter the race, all rapists are subhuman, you’re just a pot stirring jerk. Other countries want our money at every turn, but they abandon us when we need them…. and heaven forbid we big bad Americans ask another country to pay back what they owe, again, the tax payers eat it.
Well, it didn’t take long for the doors to slam on the “let everything be in the open policy” did it. Our new president goes behind the voters backs to push through something that will kill more innocent babies. I’m glad that is not on my head. I guess he’s living up to his middle name after all huh. Does he think there’s any difference in GODS eyes? If he’s so worried about his daughters being saddled with an unwanted pregnancy, then let him teach them right from wrong and lock them up in their rooms until he arranges a marriage for each of them.
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