TRUMP EXPANDS PRO-LIFE INTERNATIONAL POLICY

Reactions to Trump's Policies Are Telling

February 02, 2018 - FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL

Newton's third law of motion says that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. If that's true of the physical world, then it's abundantly evident in the political world. If a president is gaining ground in an area, then the level of resistance from the opposition rises.

President Trump has been resisted by the Left from the outset. 

After all, an entire "RESIST" movement was hatched at the very beginning of his presidency. But while many thought they had a handle on the president's personality, they didn't expect the level of change Donald Trump would introduce in his policies.

One of the very first actions when President Trump took office was to reinstate the "Mexico City Policy," a memorandum first issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 at the United Nations population conference in Mexico City. 

The policy halts federal funds from going to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform abortions or "actively promote" abortion as a method of family planning in other countries. 

Every Democratic president since has rescinded the policy, with every Republican president reinstating it.

But Donald Trump not only reinstated this lifesaving policy, he expanded it. Whereas the Mexico City Policy banned funding for abortion in family planning abroad (which totaled about $600 million), the Trump administration expanded the Mexico City Policy's requirements to "global health assistance furnished by all Departments or Agencies." 

Under the new "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance" plan, $8.8 billion in foreign aid is subject to abortion restrictions. It's not unusual that a Republican would turn a pro-abortion policy back to what it was, but it is unusual for a president to then expand that policy to make it even more pro-life!

And now, even the pro-abortion Left is acknowledging the effect of Trump's new policies. Rebecca Oas of The Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) notes in a column at LifeSite News that some of the president's "harshest critics admit that his reinstatement and expansion of the pro-life Mexico City Policy has been highly effective in advancing the United States' moral influence to curb the international abortion lobby."

Oas observed that at a panel hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health on the issue, pro-abortion speakers lamented the impact of Trump's new policy. 

Elisha Dunn-Georgiou of Population ACTION International said that it had a "huge, huge chilling effect" on the global pro-abortion movement. Duff Gillespie, a Gates Institute fellow, admitted, 

"It's not irrational, the behavior that the Mexico City Policy has caused ... and I would say, yeah, unfortunately, it does work."

Elections matter.

And in the case of abortion funding abroad, it's a life-or-death matter for the unborn. And if you don't take my word for it, listen to the anti-life Left!

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Tony Perkins' Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA18B05&f=WU18B02