Abortionists Seek to Hijack New Bush AIDS Budget

By C-FAM Staff

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) Hoping to exploit a legislative weakness, abortion providers and population control organizations have seized upon the Bush Administration's new $15 billion AIDS program for Africa, seeking to regain some of the Federal funding that President Bush has blocked from them since the beginning of his administration.

     On his first day in office, President Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which requires that foreign nongovernmental organizations receiving Federal funds neither perform abortions nor actively promote abortion. Because of the restoration of the Mexico City Policy, organizations that refuse to abandon abortion, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), have been largely ineligible for US funding.

     However, the Mexico City Policy only applies to funding contracts for population programs, not for AIDS programs, and herein lies the opportunity for groups such as IPPF, which have already exploited this limitation. For instance, a New York-based NGO, the Population Council, has recently received $65 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for an AIDS program, even though this group advocates for abortion, and even though it actually holds the patent for the abortion drug RU-486.

     In 2002, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave a $3.2 million grant to a South African abortion researcher for an AIDS project.

     The researcher, Dr. James McIntyre, is the National Vice Chairman of the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA), and has been active in promoting the spread of menstrual regulation, an early-abortion procedure carried out with a manual vacuum aspirator.

     Now that President Bush has committed the administration to about $10 billion dollars in new funding for this AIDS imitative, there is even more incentive for such groups to promote themselves as AIDS-prevention experts. In a recent advertisement, the Population Council claimed that it "develops and evaluates innovative strategies to support children affected by AIDS. The Population Council conducts biomedical, public health, and social science research on global issues, including.HIV/AIDS."

     In a January press release, IPPF acknowledged the possibility for additional funding, noting that "details on how the money would be used are sketchy."

     The Bush administration knows of concerns that AIDS money may fund abortions, and seems willing to close all of the loop-holes of the Mexico City Policy. When the issue was raised with Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said that, "In the very near future, we'll be meeting within the administration to examine the various new programs.but especially the new global [AIDS] initiative, and bouncing it against other policies such as the Mexico City Policy to make sure that we have a consistent approach across the whole administration. We are aware of your concern and we'll be meeting on that within the next few days."

     So far, social conservatives, an important constituency for President Bush, have voiced qualified support for the AIDS program. But this support will likely fade if the program is destined to become a funding engine for the international pro-abortion movement.

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