Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Des Moines Register newspaper, confirmed on Tuesday that he will stop taxpayer funding to the international branch of the nation’s biggest abortion business.
“But by executive order, not by legislation, he would reinstate the so-called Mexico City policy that bans U.S. foreign aid dollars from being used to do abortions, he said,” the newspaper reported.
Romney has repeatedly indicated he would restore the Mexico City Policy, an executive order pro-life presidents have used to ensure taxpayer funds in the foreign aid budget don’t go to groups that perform or promote abortions in other nations.
Earlier this year, looking specifically at the kinds of policies Romney said he would institute as president, he continued: “I will reinstate the Mexico City Policy. I’ll cut off funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which supports China’s abhorrent one child policy. I’ll ensure that abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood get no taxpayer dollars.”
Romney also said as much in a letter laying out the pro-life agenda he would take as president.
“I will reinstate the Mexico City Policy to ensure that nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from America refrain from performing or promoting abortion services, as a method of family planning, in other countries. This includes ending American funding for any United Nations or other foreign assistance program that promotes or performs abortions on women around the world,” he said.
In his first pro-abortion decision as president, Barack Obama scrapped the Mexico City Policy and taxpayers to fund groups promoting and performing abortions overseas.
The executive order made non-governmental groups that do abortions in other nations or lobby pro-life countries to overturn their abortion limits eligible for public funds. During the Bush administration, such groups were prevented from receiving the family planning money or any aid through the State Department, if they would not back down from their pro-abortion agenda.
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Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, emailed LifeNews.com about Obama’s decision at the time.
He told LifeNews.com how the executive order will hurt non-abortion groups that provide medical care and services to women and families in foreign nations.
“One effect of Obama’s 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 the most aggressive in promoting abortion in developing countries,” he said.
“Obama’s order will predictably result in a redirection of funds to groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which are ideologically committed to the doctrine that abortion on demand must be universally available as a birth control method,” Johnson said.
The two biggest abortion businesses in the world, the U.S.-based Planned Parenthood and the British-based Marie Stopes International, refused to stop doing abortions or trying to get nations to abandon their pro-life culture and heritage and refused to follow the pro-life rules and accept the funds.
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.
