Democrats Pack Overseas Funding Bill to Benefit Abortion Groups

By Lisa Correnti | July 16, 2020

Chairman Nita Lowey presiding over mark-up hearing on SFOPs bill

A contentious appropriations battle lies ahead in Congress as Democrats loaded a funding bill for overseas operations with an attempt to repeal the Mexico City Policy, restore funding to the UN Population Fund, and increase bilateral family planning to $750M.

The overseas spending (FY’21 SFOPs) bill passed out of the full committee along a party line vote of 29 to 21 last week. The bill stipulates “not less than” $750 million in bilateral family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) – a $175M increase from current year. This increase is well on its way to reaching the $1 billion in bilateral FP/RH funding abortion groups have been seeking.

The bill also includes a legislative repeal of the Mexico City Policy that would allow global abortion giants International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International and their affiliates to be on the receiving end of U.S. family planning grants, as they were during the Obama administration.

To assure overseas abortion groups are eligible to receive funds from the bloated family planning budget Democrats included language that stipulates that none of the funds appropriated in the bill “shall be made available to implement the Presidential Memorandum on Mexico City Policy dated January 23, 2017.”

The SFOPs also restores funding to the controversial UN Population Fund at $55M – up from $32M appropriated last year.

For the fourth consecutive year under the Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo invoked the Kemp-Kasten amendment withholding funding to UNFPA for complicity in China’s coercive family planning programs. Democrats made a small but important change in the bill that will weaken the application of Kemp-Kasten in the future, requiring “direct” evidence of coercive family planning.

The committee approved bill also earmarks funding to the World Health Organization which President Trump has announced he will sever ties due to the agency’s complicity with China in delaying knowledge of the dangers of COVID-19.

Democrats appropriated $118M to the WHO for assessed dues and an additional $1.2B in voluntary funding to support the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan COVID–19.  The UN COVID-19 response plan prioritizes abortion as an essential service.

The SFOPs bill was the first of 12 subcommittee spending bills to be taken up by the House. It is expected to be packaged with other appropriation bills in a mini-bus and moved through the full House by the end of the month.

In the full committee mark-up the ranking member for the SFOPs appropriation subcommittee, Hal Rogers (KY-R) proposed an amendment to remove the anti-life provisions but it failed along party lines 21-29. Rogers stated that the partisan riders including overturning the Mexico City Policy would prevent this from ever becoming law.

Objecting to restoring UNFPA funding Rep. Andy Harris (MD-R) spoke about the agency’s involvement in abortion stating, “UNFPA supports abortion both implicitly and explicitly.”

Additional policy changes made in the bill would protect family planning funding from being disrupted when the U.S. determines a country is in violation of receiving foreign aid, and a move to add family planning to the HIV/AIDs Capital Fund. This entanglement could create a larger funding stream for global abortion groups offering HIV/AIDs and FP services.

The Senate has yet to release its version of the SFOPs bill though it is expected to safeguard all pro-life protections assuring a difficult reconciliation process when the bills move to conference.

Last year President Trump made it clear he would veto any appropriation bill that compromised his administration’s pro-life policy.

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