Foreign Aid and the Politics of Abortion

Under the Bush Administration, the US has returned to the “Mexico City Policy,” which forbids foreign aid to be given to any nation or organization that fosters, permits or even discusses abortion as part of family planning or AIDS education. Policies such as the “Mexico City Policy” frequently are viewed as hypocritical due to a tendency of such regulations to be lax or irrelevant in the sponsoring country. In the case of the United States, women have the right to consider abortion early in pregnancy as a legal option due to the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, 1973. According to the Planned Parenthood fact sheet, “in its ruling, the court recognized for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy ‘is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy’ (Roe v. Wade, 1973).” (Planned Parenthood Federation of America) National governments, such as the US Federal Government, have the right to create the criteria of disbursement of foreign aid as the government sees fit, regardless of the adherence to these principles in the issuing country.

Legally, the US and other nations have the ability to decide how aid for programs such as AIDS education and family planning are disbursed. While some countries with very different moral and ethical views on topics such as abortion might disagree with how countries such as the US disperse funds, such countries have the right as well to limit funding to programs that do include in depth discussion of abortion in programs on AIDS education or family planning. As long as a country systematically applies criteria to all countries applying for aid, the country giving the aid has the ability set the criteria.