Analysis: Washington Post Gets PEPFAR Abortion Story Wrong

By | August 3, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 4 (C-Fam) A recent article in the Washington Post discussed how abortion has roiled the U.S. government’s international HIV/AIDS program.  Missing from the story is an any reckoning with the way that abortion has infiltrated an ever-growing list of international policy areas, including the fight against HIV, and why Republicans say new protections are needed.

The head of the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), John Nkengasong, recently insisted that the program has never been, and will never be, used to promote abortion. If this is the case then the addition of legal provisions ensuring that remains the case should not be controversial.  At worst, such language would be redundant.

However, it is clear that the PEPFAR program has funneled U.S. dollars to groups that promote abortion. This was totally missing from the Washington Post story.

The U.S. government has taken measures to ensure that its international assistance grants do not go to groups affiliated with terrorist organizations, such as Boko Haram.  Pro-life advocates want to ensure that U.S. HIV/AIDS assistance remains untainted by abortion.  Supporters of PEPFAR on both sides of the political aisle insist that there is no intention to do otherwise.  So why the controversy?

With limited exceptions, groups that promote and provide abortion internationally engage in other work as well, and have sought out other streams of U.S. funding, starting with family planning and expanding into health, education, women’s empowerment, water and sanitation, and beyond.

In the 1980s, President Reagan noted that even though U.S. law prevented funding for abortions overseas, abortion organizations were receiving U.S. funding for family planning.  He instituted the Mexico City Policy to make it clear that, if you were an organization engaged in the lethal work of promoting and providing abortions, you were ineligible to partner with the U.S. and receive funding from the American people.

The U.S. has remained a leading supporter of international family planning, regardless of whether the policy has been in place under Republican presidents or rescinded under Democratic presidents.

More recently, when former President Trump expanded the Mexico City Policy to cover all global health funding—including PEPFAR—the compliance by grantees was overwhelmingly high.  There was no shortage of organizations willing to partner with the U.S. government who did not promote abortion, or who were willing to cease doing so in order to be eligible.

Meanwhile, since the Obama administration, PEPFAR has allowed for integration between HIV and family planning services, a development hailed by the pro-abortion Physicians for Human Rights as “thanks to the efforts of activists” like its supporters.  They went on to express hope for “a whole new set of funds for holistic women’s health interventions via PEPFAR.”

Another example of integration between issue areas is the DREAMS partnership intended to prevent HIV in adolescent girls.  This “comprehensive, multi-sectoral package of core interventions” is delivered by implementing partners that include pro-abortion groups Population Services International and Pathfinder International.

The addition of common-sense pro-life safeguards into the PEPFAR reauthorization would ensure that the program retains the high level of bipartisan support it has long enjoyed, sideline a minority of bad actors from receiving U.S. funding, and ensure continued high-level services for those who need them.  The fact that this request has been met with such resistance—and obfuscation, including in the press—is tantamount to an admission that the abortion lobby knows it has something to lose.

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