Obama Expected to Overturn Mexico City Policy, Fund Abortions, Thursday

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 21, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Obama Expected to Overturn Mexico City Policy, Fund Abortions, Thursday

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 21
, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama appeared to give the Mexico City Policy a one-day reprieve on Wednesday, even though he was expected to ditch the pro-life measure on his first day in office. Obama is expected to scrap the limit on funding groups that promote or perform abortions overseas later this week.

Obama gathered with reporters and top staffers Wednesday afternoon at the White House and was expected to announce a slate of executive orders reversing policy President Bush implemented.

Although he froze staff pay and issued an order related to Guantanamo Bay and temporarily halting prosecutions of the September 11 terrorists, the abortion order was not delivered.

New White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, indicated the orders may come in more of a piecemeal process and that more controversial orders are expected on Thursday or later.

That means the Mexico City Policy, which requires the more than 600 groups that receive State Department taxpayer funding to pledge not to promote or perform abortions with it, will stay in place for another day.

Abortion advocates have objected to the measure for years during the Bush administration because they want to use the funds to do abortions overseas or lobby pro-life nations to reverse their laws against unlimited abortions.

American-based abortion business Planned Parenthood and British-based abortion business Marie Stopes International have both rejected the funding because they are unwilling to abide by the abortion limits.

As a result, they persuaded Obama to lift the limits so they can again use public money to promote their abortion agenda in nations with a pro-life cultural or religious heritage.

A group of 77 members of Congress wrote Obama a letter last week asking Obama to back down from doing so.

"As a new administration begins, it is our hope you will work, as you have pledged, to create a new era of bi-partisan cooperation. We urge you to continue the Mexico City Policy, which separates abortion and family planning in America’s foreign aid programs," the bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote Obama on Friday.

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of National Right to Life, tells LifeNews.com the Mexico City Policy and Obama’s reversing it is all about abortion.

It appears Obama’s move will take money away from non-abortion groups that provide services to poor people in foreign nations.
"One effect of Obama’s anticipated order will be to divert many millions of dollars away from groups that do not promote abortion, and into the hands of those organizations that are most militant in promoting abortion as a population-control method," Johnson explained.

"So, a president who not long ago told the American people that he wanted to reduce the number of abortions, is already effectively promoting the increased use of abortion as a means of population control," Johnson added.

President Reagan first put the Mexico City Policy in place and it is named for a population conference that took place in the Mexican capital in 1984 when he introduced it.

President George H.W. Bush continued the pro-life policy, President Clinton overturned it, and President George W. Bush kept it for eight years and threatened to veto any Congressional spending bill reversing it.

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