Anne Halpine and Greg Pfundstein ask why the Obama administration wants to derail efforts by the G-8 to send aid to improve maternal and infant health in the poorest nations of the world. The G-8 met this week to discuss a wide variety of topics, mainly focusing on economic growth but also foreign aid. In their National Review column, Halpine and Pfundstein report that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants that aid held hostage in order to push an abortion agenda:
On the agenda at the G8 summit in Canada is promoting maternal and infant health in the poorest parts of the globe. The high rates of maternal and infant mortality in many countries are an impediment to democracy and social development, to say nothing of a human tragedy for these communities. Commitments of resources from the G8 countries to address these problems should be welcomed and commended. Why, then, is the Obama delegation threatening to derail these agreements? …
Given this, one would expect there to be universal support for Canada’s leadership in taking on these problems and working to meet these critical needs. But the Obama administration is obstructing this positive consensus. Hillary Clinton, when asked about Canada’s G8 plan to address infant and maternal health in the developing world, said the following: “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.” …
When top U.S. officials change the subject away from important global policy and development work to push for favored hot-button political issues, it gives the appearance of using American taxpayer funding to promote social engineering, bypassing public debate about the best way to achieve development worldwide and address the very real unmet needs of the developing world. Does Hillary Clinton think it is more important to promote liberal Western ideologies than to address the critical needs of the women and children of Africa and Asia? Does she prefer to promote the tired, old eugenic orthodoxies of the largely discredited population-control movement? Is Hillary Clinton — and the Obama administration — willing to hold up funding for maternal and infant health because of a dogmatic commitment to a universal right to abortion on demand? What about the rights of countless women all over the world who want to bring children into the world safely, without risking their lives and the lives of their children?
The short answer appears to be yes. It’s laden with irony, since the Left accused the Bush administration of politicizing aid in insisting that its family-planning subsidies around the world not be used to fund abortions. That at least was narrowly targeted at the the same issue. This is literally taking food and medicine out of the mouths of infants in order to push for abortions despite the values and desires of the local populations. It’s every bit as arrogant as the cultural imperialism that the Left likes to accuse Americans of committing when we push for democratic reform.
Besides, Hillary’s statement is nothing short of idiotic. Maternal health does not depend on abortion. In fact, abortion is a rather moot point when it comes to the stage of worrying about the health of mothers of newborn infants, isn’t it?
