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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
With one swift move of the pen, President Bush angers pro-choice activists, while strident pro-lifers say he didn't go far enough.
Jan 23, 2001 | For abortion foes, winning the White House has already begun to earn dividends, as President George W. Bush signed an executive order Monday to end American funding for international family planning organizations that offer abortions or abortion counseling. But while Bush's move was met warmly by some anti-abortion activists, the staunchest remain unconvinced of the new president's anti-abortion bona fides.
"I would love to say that I was thrilled, but I'm not," said Judie Brown, leader of the American Life League. "It's one-half of one-tenth of a baby step."
Brown, a self-described "pro-life fanatic," represents a faction of the anti-abortion community that has strongly questioned Bush's commitment to ending abortion; in a May 2000 letter to him and Al Gore she said that both of them "sanction the killing of innocent babies in the womb."
She says that what the president did on Monday just proves that he won't be strong enough to fight for the ultimate reversal of Roe vs. Wade.
She points to the opening days of the Clinton administration, when the new president issued five executive orders that advanced abortion rights: lifting a ban on abortions performed at military hospitals; pressing the Food and Drug Administration to speed up testing of RU-486; loosening the congressional ban on federal funding of fetal stem cell research; striking down the national "gag rule" that forbade federally funded family planning organizations from discussing abortion; and reversing the Mexico City rule or "global gag rule" that imposed that same national gag rule on international groups.
"If Bush were as strong in his pro-life beliefs as Clinton was in his pro-abortion convictions," Brown said, "he would have reversed them all."
Bush's executive order reinstates the Mexico City rule that was put into place in 1984 during a United Nations population control conference in Mexico City, when Reagan administration officials decreed that the United States would no longer fund international family planning organizations that provided abortions or information about abortion.
While the most strident pro-lifers said the new president did not go far enough, the National Right to Life Committee hailed the move as the first step toward reversing the pro-choice moves of the Clinton presidency. "Of course, we're very pleased with this," said David Osteen, executive director of the NRLC. "This will save the lives of many unborn children all over the world."
