The Road Down from Mexico City

On January 23, President Barack Obama reversed the Mexico City Policy, which stipulated that the United States would not provide reproductive health aid to non-governmental organizations that performed or promoted abortion as a means of family planning. He presented his decision as a conciliatory gesture, arguing that “for too long, international family planning assistance has been…the subject of a back-and-forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.” In this claim Obama is half-correct. He has indeed avoided a nuanced debate on this controversial policy, but his firm, agonistic posture on the issue is likely to trip up efforts to provide workable reproductive health services to women abroad and common ground on the question at home.

The Mexico City Policy was created by the Reagan administration in 1984 and announced at a United Nations population conference in that city. Contrary to claims made by various pro-choice organizations, the policy never forbade recipients from discussing abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life. Counselors were even permitted to discuss elective abortion if the woman asked. Moreover, the move aligned our foreign policy with the reasoning behind the Hyde Amendment to Medicaid appropriations bills, first passed in 1976, which prohibited federal funds from being spent on abortion in the United States. The policy bore immediate fruit: In 1985, the UN Population Fund repudiated the funding and advocacy of abortion as a means of family planning. Though the policy was reversed by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush restored it in 2001.

Many abortion-rights supporters have claimed that the policy decreased the amount and quality of American aid for reproductive health abroad. The first objection is groundless. The rules had no effect on the size of appropriations; they merely redirected funds and resources formerly given to non-compliant groups to those that accepted the provisions. The second has some footing. When the policy came into force some major reproductive health providers, particularly some affiliates of the International Planned Parenthood Federation refused to participate, although 44 ultimately chose to. This intransigence, however, was entirely self-imposed and absurdly doctrinaire—after all, the federation does claim to advocate for a universal right to abortion on demand from puberty onward. Any practical difficulty in compliance would have been minor since, when the policy was implemented, abortion and related services accounted for less than one percent of IPPF’s budget.

Others contend that the rules attacked freedom of speech. The charge is curious on its face; freedom of speech does not entail state subsidy of speech. But state subsidy of organizations that advocate particular causes can have the appearance of state support. This is exactly one of the problems the Mexico City Policy sought to avoid. The 1994 UN population conference at Cairo asserted the right of all states to determine their own abortion laws; non-intervention in the matter is then surely the safest course for America. But groups like IPPF are actively involved in agitating for changes in abortion laws across the globe. Indeed it even encourages affiliates to “bend” local abortion laws to their advantage. Obama’s reversal is already ruffling feathers, particularly in Latin America. One Honduran lawmaker went so far as to call it “a threat to the national legislation of my country.” The new policy, then, runs the risk of a backlash that would limit the ability of NGOs funded by the United States to provide non-abortion-related services.

The question, however, is about more than instrumental policy matters. It touches on the very shape of our reproductive health policy. The UN has committed itself to avoiding the use of abortion as birth control. Obama’s sudden shift in policy means that the United States will not follow suit. While it was in effect, the Mexico City Policy helped to shift the global family planning debate away from abortion and toward education and prevention. Various forms of prophylactic birth control—from the rhythm method to chemical contraceptives—are cheaper and safer, and they pose fewer ethical problems than abortion. Increased support for NGOs that use or advocate abortion as birth control will only lead to more abortions.

Experience shows that rejecting that model is both feasible and advantageous. A review of the effects of the Hyde Amendment by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute found that it reduced the abortion rate of women on Medicaid by as much as 37 percent, with a negligible impact on maternal mortality. If you think such results are not replicable in the developing world, look at Nicaragua. In 2006, it adopted one of the strictest abortion laws in the world, yet in the following year it saw a 58-percent drop in its maternal mortality rate.

Most parties to the abortion debate, regardless of their views on its legality, want to see abortion become increasingly rare. Rather than embracing a policy that tried to do just that, Obama has given the upper hand to a tired but still dangerous agenda.


Roger G. Waite ’10 is a classics concentrator in Winthrop House. He is vice president for community impact of Harvard Right to Life.