Mexico City Policy Fallout

(photo: jillstanek.com)

Speaking to Vatican Radio, our Latin America correspondent, Alejandro Bermúdez, recently outlined some of the evil consequences of President Barack Obama’s cancellation of the Mexico City Policy.

The pro-life policy, first instituted by President Reagan and reinstituted by President George W. Bush when he assumed office in 2001 after it was overturned by President Clinton in 1993, banned the funding of groups that promote abortion overseas.

Bermúdez, who is director of the ACI Prensa Catholic news service and Catholic News Agency, explains in his Vatican Radio interview that Obama’s overturning of the Mexico City Policy has sharply reduced the amount of U.S. funding available to aid desperately impoverished areas of countries like his native Peru.

Says Bermúdez, “The American international development organization, the USAID, has a significant budget. During the previous administration, most of that money because of the Mexico City Policy could not go to organizations that promote abortion. And, therefore, that means that most of that money ended up going to the food for the people that is in need, shelter.

“From the day that the Mexico City Policy was overturned, all of these budgets of the USAID, all of these items are way open to pro-abortion organizations.

“So, in short, this is what is happening: Instead of sending money to fight food crises like the one that southern Peru is suffering right now … it’s going now to promote abortion and birth control among that same people, who is right now not only reproducing, but dying.”