July 8, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – An Associated Press (AP) reporter pushed back against President Joe Biden’s administration for arguing that it had to withdraw troops from Afghanistan because the agreement had been created under former President Donald Trump.
AP reporter Matt Lee asked State Department spokesperson Ned Price why the policy of carrying over past policies did not extend to Trump’s stance on a “right” to abortion.
“This administration inherited plenty from the previous administration that it absolutely reversed,” Lee asked. “Are you saying that you’re not confident in your negotiating skills that you could have renegotiated with – that you couldn’t have renegotiated a deal with the Taliban and that the – and are you saying that the president, in fact, didn’t want to take troops out, didn’t want to withdraw?”
VIDEO: AP reporter calls out Biden State Dept spox Ned Price's bogus spin: “You just challenged me to come up with an international agreement that the [Trump administration] signed that you guys have walked away from, and I just gave you, I think, 3.” https://t.co/JQAUmiDyuR pic.twitter.com/w3fywsTXD4
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 7, 2021
“I think you would be hard-pressed to find an international agreement that the United States signed on to during the last administration,” Price said, “that this administration has jettisoned, done away with.”
“How about the Geneva protocol on the anti-abortion stuff?” Lee asked, also bringing up “agreements with the Northern Triangle, with Mexico and the Northern Triangle.”
The Geneva protocol statement refers to the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a coalition of 32 countries that told the United Nations that there is not an “international right to abortion.”
“The document was co-sponsored by the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda, and co-signed by 32 countries in total, representing more than 1.6 billion people,” an October 2020 statement from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said.
“Without apology, we affirm that governments have the sovereign right to make their own laws to protect innocent life and write their regulations on abortion,” Trump’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar said at the time.
President Biden’s administration revoked the United States’ support for the Geneva Consensus in a January 28 memorandum. In the same memorandum, he reversed the Mexico City Policy (Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance) that barred taxpayer-funding of foreign non-governmental organizations that promote or commit abortions.
Biden said that the Mexico City Policy and other pro-life policies implemented by President Trump undermined efforts to help women.
“These excessive conditions on foreign and development assistance undermine the United States’ efforts to advance gender equality globally,” the order claimed, “by restricting our ability to support women’s health and programs that prevent and respond to gender-based violence.”