Anti-abortion groups are sounding the alarm on a Democratic spending bill set for a House vote Thursday to end the partial government shutdown. The inclusion would repeal a provision created by President Trump, formally known as the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, that requires foreign nongovernmental organizations to certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.”
The bill also would increase funding by $5 million for the United Nations Population Fund, to $37.5 million. Anti-abortion organizations oppose the program because they say it participates in coercive abortions and involuntary sterilizations.
The legislation is the same text as a bipartisan Senate bill that passed unanimously in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The anti-abortion organization March for Life said it would score against the final package if the provisions are included in the version that receives a vote Thursday. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, accused Democrats of “already trying to foist a radical pro-abortion agenda on the nation.”
“A strong majority of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion,” she said, adding that repealing Trump’s policy on nongovernmental organizations would make “taxpayers complicit in the exportation of abortion and destruction of countless unborn children around the world. This is unconscionable and we oppose the bill in the strongest terms.”
Democrats plan to vote on two separate bills Thursday to fund the federal government, one of which will focus on homeland security as they refuse to meet Trump’s demands for $5 billion to fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The bills face dim prospects in the GOP-controlled Senate. The federal government has faced a partial government shutdown for 12 days, and Democratic leaders announced Wednesday that they still had not been able to reach an agreement with Trump.
The spending bill that Democrats introduced Wednesday includes language specifying that foreign non-governmental organizations that perform abortions consistent with the laws in their country are not ineligible for U.S. family planning funds.
On their first day back in control of the House, Democrats make sure to remind America of their number one priority at all times, in all things: Abortion.https://t.co/5DtqNWDHXh
— CatholicVote.org (@CatholicVote) January 3, 2019
Source: Washington Examiner
