Statement released after the President rescinds "Mexico City Policy"This is something any pragmatic pro-lifer should be able to get behind.
It is clear that the provisions of the Mexico City Policy are unnecessarily broad and unwarranted under current law, and for the past eight years, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.
For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.
It is time that we end the politicization of this issue. In the coming weeks, my Administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.
I have directed my staff to reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies. They will also work to promote safe motherhood, reduce maternal and infant mortality rates and increase educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.
In addition, I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries.
If you can't then I prefer the term anti-choice, since there are plenty of actual pro-life people (like myself) who are yet pro-choice.
how can you trust anything the U.N does? you must be kidding yourself.
ReplyDeletethe problem with this approach is that it opens the gates for american funding of abortions beyond proportion.
prolifers would be more understanding if pro-death folks would relax the blood thirsty abortion love affair. abortion should be last resort, matter of life or death, not first option. as in planned parenthood. Ask PP how much of their funding comes from abortion. you'll see what I mean...if they even tell you.
There's significant money in performing abortions? I didn't realize it was lucrative.
ReplyDeleteSill, if true that's probably from the constricted availability. Anti-choicers would further restrict availability. So there's no argument on that point...
a Culture11 commenter:
ReplyDeleteundoing the gag rule doesn’t spend one more cent abroad. All it says, is that when spending money abroad — for example, on AIDS programs in Africa — the US may work with organizations that also discuss abortions. It prevents US aid from becoming an anti-abortion stick that dictates which organizations may be involved in various programs, no matter how harmful that is to the effort at hand. Now, yeah, I know: those who oppose abortion want US aid to be an anti-abortion stick, and to them, nothing is more important. That’s why they want the gag rule, so that opposing abortion becomes the first thing.