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 Trump in 2017 reinstated a policy known as the "Mexico City Policy,"
requiring foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive
U.S. family planning funds to certify they do not provide abortions
or give abortion advice.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Tuesday the
United States will expand that policy, known by critics as the
"global gag rule," by cracking down on NGOs that fund other groups
that support abortion.
"We will refuse to provide assistance to foreign NGOs that give
financial support to other foreign groups in the global abortion
industry," Pompeo told reporters.
"We will enforce a strict prohibition on backdoor funding schemes
and end-runs around our policy," he said, "American taxpayer dollars
will not be used to underwrite abortions."
Studies have found the Mexico City Policy leads to increases in
abortion rates because of cuts to contraception use and closures of
health clinics. The rule also potentially raises the risk of
maternal deaths and endangers children's health worldwide,
researchers have said.
Pompeo said the United States will cut funding to the OAS as result
of the expanded rule. "The institutions of OAS should be focused on
addressing crises in Cuba, Nicaragua and in Venezuela, not advancing
the pro-abortion cause," he said.
State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said the United States
would cut about $210,000 in funding from the OAS' Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous group that promotes human
rights within the regional organization.
The Washington-based OAS did not comment.
Anti-abortion groups applauded the announcement. "Taxpayer dollars
should not fund abortion here or abroad, and respecting the inherent
dignity of the unborn person goes hand in glove with our country's
foreign assistance and humanitarian work," March for Life's
president, Jeanne Mancini, said in a statement.
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The rule has been called the Mexico City Policy since it was
unveiled at a U.N. conference there in 1984 and became one of the
centerpiece social policies of the conservative administration of
Republican former President Ronald Reagan.
Democrats and abortion rights advocates denounced the expansion as
well as the so-called gag rule, which they have said infringes on
free speech.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Twitter: "There is no end to
the depths of the Trump administration's cruelty. Millions of women
... will be arbitrarily left without care due to this shameful
decision."
Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the only woman on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to
make the Mexico City Policy illegal, said she'd asked the
administration for more information behind the decision.
"This administration's obsession with attacking women’s reproductive
health is egregious and dangerous," she said.
Leana Wen, the head of Planned Parenthood, which President Donald
Trump vowed in his presidential campaign to defund for providing
abortions, described Pompeo's announcement as "unethical, dangerous
and unacceptable."
Heather Boonstra, public policy director for the Guttmacher
Institute, which researches and promotes family planning, called
expansion part of a "crusade" against reproductive health.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Makini Brice; additional
reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Susan Heavey, Jeffrey
Benkoe, Bill Berkrot and G Crosse)
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