The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has restored the “policy of Mexico City”, a long -standing prohibition of government financing of foreign organizations that provide and promote abortions.
The President an executive order issued on Friday revoking the 2021 guideline of former president Joe Biden, who had eliminated this policy of seniority.
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The rule was first implemented by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and since then all the Democratic presidents have repealed it and all the Republicans have implemented it again. Trump had expanded the norm in his first mandate to include several new government health initiatives.
The Standard prohibits financing with taxpayers funds to foreign non -governmental organizations that promote or carry out abortions as a family planning method. Foreign governments and some international groups are exempt from the norm.
The measure was first announced by the United States in 1984, at the Second International Conference on Population in Mexico City, which gave rise to its popular name for a long time.
The order comes in the middle of a series of executive orders issued by Trump during his first week in office. The president has given directives on policies that include climate, death penalty, immigration and transgenerism, some of which They have been criticized by US bishops.
Friday’s order received praise from the defenders of life. “President Trump’s great decision to restore the policy of Mexico City, which guarantees that US taxpayers do not finance the murder of babies abroad!” wrote the founder of Live Action, Lila Rose, in XFriday night.
“Life is winning in the United States”, Mike Pence wroteformer vice president of Trump, also in X.
Before Friday’s order, New Jersey representative, Chris Smith, told CNA – Ewtn News news agency – that he expected the restored rule to allow Congress to carry out a complete review of international programs that receive federal funds .
“We have great hopes and expectations,” he told CNA. “It is necessary for a comprehensive review of these programs to be made. We must ask ourselves: What are they doing with money? ”He added.
Smith, who assumed the position in 1981, said he was one of the first defenders of Mexico City when President Ronald Reagan first implemented it. He maintained the need for strict supervision of federal money that flows to international groups, and pointed out the recent scandal in which funds from the President’s emergency plan for AIDS relief were used to provide abortions in Mozambique.
Smith said that these abortions are “absolutely the tip of the iceberg”, and predicted that “this year there will be a great struggle” by the defenders of life that seek to prohibit international financing with federal funds of abortions.
The measure was not exempt from criticism. Washington’s Democratic senator Patty Murray said In a statement on Friday night That Mexico City’s policy was a “dangerous policy” that restricts “reproductive health services that save lives.”
By predicting more provident measures by the Trump administration, Murray promised that the Democrats “will counterattack in all possible ways.”
On Friday, with a different orderTrump revoked what he said were directives of the Biden Administration that had violated the Hyde de Largo Data amendment, which widely prohibits federal funds to pay abortions in the United States.
That amendment entered into force for the first time in 1980, but the Biden administration “ignored this established and common sense policy by incorporating the forced financing of elective abortions by taxpayers in a wide variety of federal programs,” Trump said.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.
Daniel Payne
Daniel Payne is a senior editor of Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.