Obama Admin Spends Billions on Africa Family Planning, Claims No Abortion Funds
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 6, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Obama administration on Tuesday announced it would be sending $63 million overseas for family planning programs. The money, which officials claim will not fund abortions, is headed mostly to Africa to build on the Bush Administration’s success combating AIDS there.
Although the Bush administration was successful in battling the disease with programs that focused on abstinence education, the Obama administration is shifting gears with more family planning emphasis.
According to a press release LifeNews.com obtained, Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew said the Obama budget increases the money that will be spent promoting birth control and contraception.
Lew sought to reassure pro-life advocates that the funds will not be used to pay for abortions.
"That’s not what this funding is about," Lew said. "This funding is about dealing with prenatal care, postnatal care, tropical diseases, children who die from diarrhea."
However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added to the concerns during a Congressional hearing where she admitted that the term “reproductive rights” includes abortion.
Her statement confirms what pro-life organizations have said for years about how abortion advocates want to include seemingly-innocuous terms like “reproductive rights” and “reproductive health” in international documents and legislation and define those terms later as covering abortions.
"We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health," Clinton told pro-life Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican. "And reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal, and rare."
In a statement sent to LifeNews.com, Smith said Clinton’s testimony shows how the Obama administration is planning to promote abortion as an international right and to do so at taxpayer expense.
"It is evident that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama want to force the tragedy of abortion upon women around the world especially and including in countries where democratically elected leaders want to continue to protect their unborn children," Smith said.
"There are other ways in which both mother and baby are protected, cared for and helped– with food, nutrition, clean water and life-affirming healthcare. Secretary Clinton’s inability to see this will mean more babies will die and more women will suffer the consequence of abortion as a result of U.S. foreign policy overseas, he added.
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