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Council of Europe, Planned Parenthood Attack US Pro-Life Foreign Policy

New York, October 2, 2003 (C-Fam.org/LifeSiteNews.com) - C-Fam reports in its Oct. 2 Friday Fax that on Tuesday, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted 89 to 8 to condemn the U.S.'s Mexico City Policy and to encourage President Bush to rescind its controls on U.S. taxpayer funded foreign aid programs.

At the same time, a group of abortion providers and population control advocates, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, released a report making the far-fetched claim that, because of the policy, the administration was responsible for killing women and for subverting democracy throughout the developing world.

The Mexico City Policy was first enacted as an executive order of President Reagan at a population conference in 1984, and it forbade the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from funding foreign abortion providers or promoters. President Clinton dropped the policy on his first day in office, and President Bush reinstated it as one of his own initial acts in office. Last month, the Mexico City Policy was extended to apply to State Department funding of family planning programs, as well as to USAID funding.

The Mexico City Policy has long been derided as "the global gag rule" by its detractors, but the intensity and coordination of the current attacks seem greater than before. Ans Zwerver, a Dutch Socialist and a guiding force behind the Council's decision, told the Agence France-Presse that the Mexico City Policy "is a contradiction in itself, it is not pro-life, but rather against it," because "all women should have access to abortions performed under 'secure and accessible' conditions." Zwerver also said that the policy has had "an insidiously negative influence on the climate of opinion relating to reproductive and sexual health services."

In a report called "Access Denied," Population Action International, Ipas, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Engender Health and Pathfinder International claim that the policy is maiming and killing women, and stifling democratic debate.

However, during testimony before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2001, the economist Dr. Maria Sophia Aguirre stated that "the fact that some organizations want to advocate abortion and to perform abortions does not mean that US tax money should pay for it. Nothing in the Mexico City Policy forbids these groups from advocacy. It simply denies the use of funds for this purpose."

Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute

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