Urgent:  Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NewYork) has inserted a provision into the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill to kill the Mexico City Policy. This Appropriations bill will be considered on the House floor soon.  Contact your Representatives now at 202-225-3121 and ask them not to gut the Mexico City Policy.

President Bush’s commitment to upholding the Mexico City Policy has stripped funding from pro-abortion groups in Kenya.  International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and other groups received government funds during the Clinton administration to provide “health and reproductive services” which they used to monetarily entice Kenyan doctors to defy their nation’s laws by committing abortions in a country which outlaws them.

According to Joseph Ofisi, a Kenyan doctor now studying in the U.S., doctors were targeted by IPPF and paid to attend “extravagant conferences in 5 star hotels where the abortion agenda was pushed and doctors taught the techniques of abortion procedure.”  These conferences are not advertised as abortion training seminars, but rather as a forum to learn “new techniques in reproductive health.”  According to Dr. Ofisi, doctors who promote the abortion agenda in clinics in their villages are paid three times as much as doctors who provide legitimate health services to Kenyans.  They are also paid by the number of abortions they commit.  This creates an incentive to increase the prevalence of abortion in a country where the majority of the population opposes abortion and the law forbids it.

Since the majority of Kenyans oppose abortion, doctors developed tactics to encourage women to have abortions which ignore the issue of choice altogether.  When a woman missed her period, she would go to a clinic that provided “menstrual regulation” services.  There, she was informed that a minor surgery must be done to correct the problem.  The doctor then performed a dilation and curettage (D & C) abortion on a woman who believed she was having a minor operation to correct her menstrual cycle.  There is no pregnancy test; the doctor does not even know if the girl is actually pregnant.  These clinics received funding from IPPF and the United Nations Family Planning Association (UNFPA) whose mission it was to “control” Kenya’s population.

President Bush is accused of denying funds to clinics that also combat AIDS and other diseases in developing countries.  An article in Reuters from 2003 reports, “President Bush's anti-abortion policy has hit clinics in poor countries hard, forcing some to close and leave entire communities without healthcare.”  What they do not report is that these clinics have the choice to keep their doors open with U.S. funds if they drop just one “service”:  abortion. 

These “health care providers” are making the deliberate decision to stop providing services to women if they cannot promote their pro-abortion agenda.  A congressional advisor told the BBC news, “Marie Stopes (an abortion provider based in the United Kingdom) had to make a decision if they wanted to continue receiving U.S. government funds," he says. “They made the decision that it was more important for them to be in the abortion business.”  Clearly, the abortion agenda is more important to Planned Parenthood than women’s health.

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, commended President Bush for his commitment to protecting life:  “The Mexico City Policy is more effective than many of us knew. Dr. Ofisi provides a first-hand account of how President Bush's policy of protecting life by not allowing tax-dollars to subsidize organizations that promote abortion has a multi-fold effect.  It saves lives and leads doctors to moral, life-affirming, Hypocratic-oath honoring careers.”

Bush’s policies have directed U.S. funding to programs that actually improve quality of life in developing countries.  Whereas the U.N. and Planned Parenthood are intent on decreasing the population in certain countries through dangerous and illegal procedures, the President has upheld the right of women to choose life.