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The New York Times
Abortion Complicates
Congressional Debate
Over Foreign Aid Bill
By CELIA W. DUGGER,
nytimes.com on the Web, December 9, 2007
Anti-abortion Democrats in Congress
this year joined abortion rights supporters to pass a foreign aid spending bill
that they all said would reduce abortions in poor countries. It would
allow the federal government to donate contraceptives to foreign groups that
provide family planning services abroad, including those that offer abortions or
favor making them legal.
But Democratic leaders in the House and Senate now have to decide whether to
keep this provision in a major appropriations bill that includes popular
programs to fight AIDS and malaria globally, knowing that President Bush is
likely to veto it. Their decision is expected by Monday.
“People feel very strongly about the principle and that this president has
ignored majorities in the House and Senate on this issue,” said Tim Rieser, the
senior Democratic staff member on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on
foreign aid. “But we also know we don’t have the votes to override a
veto.”
This is the latest skirmish over a policy to prohibit giving federal funds for
family planning programs to foreign groups that perform abortions or promote
abortion as a family planning method. Known as the Mexico City policy,
because it was announced there at a United Nations conference in 1984, it
remained in force during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W.
Bush. It was rescinded by President Clinton and reinstated by President Bush.
This year, the debate over the issue took a new twist when House Democrats on
both sides of the abortion issue supported a compromise to give all family
planning groups, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation,
contraceptives, though not any federal money. The Senate voted to rescind
the Mexico City policy.
The Mexico City policy cost the International Planned Parenthood Federation and
its national member associations at least $116 million in federal financing in
recent years, said Steven W. Sinding, who ran the organization from 2002 to
2006.
The government’s budget for global family planning programs in 2006 was $436
million.
Five of the anti-abortion Democrats in the House, including Representatives Jim
Langevin of Rhode Island and Henry Cuellar of Texas, wrote to leaders of the
House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday advocating that the committee keep
the provision in the bill on the grounds that “it will help reduce the need for
abortion, the number of unintended pregnancies, and the spread of H.I.V./AIDS.”
But in the impassioned debate in Congress earlier this year, Republicans said
that giving contraceptives to such groups was the same as giving them money and
would free up resources that could be used for abortions.
Mr. Bush and administration officials have issued veto threats. A White
House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said the president, like the Republicans in the
House, saw a donation of contraceptives as “providing support with taxpayer
dollars to nongovernmental organizations that promote abortion as a method of
family planning.”
Mr. Fratto did not say categorically that Mr. Bush would veto a bill that
included such a provision, but he did say the president’s senior advisers would
urge him to do so. “We have had veto threats, and it is something we’d be
inclined to veto,” he said.
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