Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of health, speaks at a White House press briefing on November 19, 2020, at the Working Group on CCPV (Wuhan pneumonia).
President Joe Biden will lift an abortion ban and re-fund foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or actively promote abortion services, provide counseling or advocate for abortion plans, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday (Jan. 21).
“Our policy will be to support the sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights of women and girls in the United States and around the world,” Fauci, newly appointed as chief medical adviser to the president, said in a speech to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“To that end, President Biden will rescind The Mexico City Policy in the coming days as part of his broader commitment to protecting women’s health and promoting gender equality at Home and around the world.”
“The Mexico City Policy was an executive order issued by President Reagan in 1984 that required NGOs to agree, when receiving any federal grant, that they “will not carry out or actively cooperate with abortion-promoting Family programs in another country. This policy became known as the “Global Abortion Ban. Former President Clinton rescinded the executive order in 1993, reinstated it under President George W. Bush Jr. and again after President Obama took office in 2009.
Former President Trump signed the reinstatement of the policy in 2017, which banned all NGOs that receive financial support from the U.S. federal government from providing abortion services and counseling overseas. Trump extended the ban to all global health aid, including funding for HIV, maternal and child health, and malaria. In addition, the ban also denies funding to NGOs that fund “overseas groups that support or promote abortion,” repealing the “backdoor funding schemes.
Former Secretary Pompeo said in March 2019: “In response to today’s decision, we are making clear that we will deny financial support to foreign NGOs (that support abortion) in order to prevent them from providing assistance to other foreign groups in the global abortion industry. We will strictly prohibit backdoor funding schemes …… American taxpayer dollars will not be used to underwrite abortions.”
Trump was a strong pro-Life and pro-religious liberty advocate while in office and issued orders and proclamations requiring the government to protect the sanctity of life and the unborn child and to ensure religious exemptions in policy.
In contrast, both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have expressed support for abortion and have sought to overturn policies that restrict abortion. During the campaign, they both said they would push for codification of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in all 50 states.
Biden also pledged to expand Americans’ access to contraceptives, supported the repeal of the Hyde Amendmen Amendment, which prevents federal funds from being used for abortion services, and said he would “protect the constitutional right to abortion.
Some religious liberty advocates fear that religious liberty protections implemented by the previous administration may be overturned under a Biden Administration, including forcing people of faith to undergo medical procedures or forcing religious employers to provide health insurance in areas that violate their religious beliefs.
Biden signed an executive order Wednesday (Jan. 20) codifying the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was a federal statute, was a violation of the right to health. The decision codified the Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia decision, which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defines discrimination in the hiring of “unisex” individuals to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. Many religious conservatives have criticized this provision as putting religious employers and nonprofit organizations at risk when making hiring decisions.
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