5 Groups Profit from Mexico City Policy Reversal

5 groups profit from Mexico City policy repeal

In 2003, two years after President George Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy (referred to by abortion proponents as the "global gag rule"), which denies U.S. funds to international groups that commit or promote abortion, the BBC reported the following:

Hundreds of women's health organisations in the poorest nations of the world - places where maternal mortality and infant death are high – faced a tough choice. Either sign the gag rule and be silenced on abortion, or refuse and lose millions of dollars in US aid.
Most refused to sign. As a result, thousands of family planning clinics across the developing world have closed their doors, making access to vital contraceptives hard to come by.

In reality, only five of 457 organizations declined U.S. Agency for International Development family planning assistance in protest over the Mexico City Policy in 2001.

They were: International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Family Planning Association of Kenya and Family Planning Association of Nepal.

Notwithstanding the doubtful "thousands" claim, any organization abandoning mothers and children by closing its clinic doors rather than give up abortion showed what, not who, it really cared about.

And for what? What was surprising to me was how little these groups were getting. In 2000, the year before President Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy (after President Clinton overturned it in 1993), International Planned Parenthood got a paltry $5 million via USAID and the others combined received less than $1 million from a budget of $393.5 million – only 1.5 percent of the total.

Five million dollars is nothing to International Planned Parenthood Federation. Recalling that Planned Parenthood Federation of America reported $1 billion in income in its 2007 annual report, I sought to learn how many billions the international group earns a year.

I got as far as finding IPPF's London corporate headquarters alone made $120.5 million in 2007 and then got bogged down by the fact that three of their six regional offices (by "region" IPPF means entire continents or partial continents) didn't post earnings.

I contacted Jim Sedlak of the American Life League, an expert on Planned Parenthood, and he said it is impossible to figure out IPPF's actual earnings because some IPPFs, such as in China, are owned and funded by governments, and most IPPF affiliates don't go by the name "Planned Parenthood," adding to the confusion.

So the question still remains: How many billions does IPPF earn annually? The Congressional Research Service reported last month that the worldwide cost of "family planning services" was estimated at $17 billion in 2000, the latest figures it had, almost 10 years old. Who knows what the cost of "family planning services" is in 2009. To be sure, IPPF, grabbed a large piece of that bloody pie.

Again, $5 million was nothing to IPPF, nor must the other four have deemed getting U.S. aid worth giving up lucrative abortions.

Take Marie Stopes, another huge international abortion chain with 452 clinics in 38 countries, committing 500,000 abortions worldwide in 2007.

Its corporate office reported earnings of $93 million in 2006, but pinpointing all of its income in various pockets of the world is as difficult as pinpointing IPPF's.

Particularly dastardly, Marie Stopes is involved in coerced abortion and sterilization in China. And it has been pushing medical abortion kits particularly in rural areas "because safe services are beyond [women's] reach.

Of the remaining three, two – Family Planning Association of Kenya (now Family Health Options Kenya) and Family Planning Association of Nepal – are IPPF affiliates.

The last, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, reported earnings of $313 million for 2007.

None of these groups needs American taxpayer money. What they refused was chump change to them anyway.

So why the histrionics whenever a pro-life president reinstates the Mexico City Policy?

Fact is, pro-aborts let nothing get by them with without getting hysterical, which is very unfeminist.

But, as it has worked for women throughout time on a small scale, pro-aborts are making them work on a grand scale. Their overreactionary and relentless hysteria over the slightest encroachment is one reason pro-life politicians go weak at the thought of taking them on, and pro-abort politicians are reminded to fear the devil.

Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: WorldNetDaily
Source URL: http://www.wnd.com
Publish Date: February 11, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090211_1.htm