Is Dubya a Pro-Life President?

An overwhelming number of conservative Christians believe that George W. Bush is a pro-life president. After all, he cut off funding to organizations that promote abortion, didn't he?

Well, not quite.

Financial support that previously went to the United Nations Population Fund has been diverted to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Bush's budget for fiscal year 2005 earmarks $8.8 billion for USAID, $425 million of which is going to "family and reproductive health programs."

What exactly are these "programs"? According to the USAID website, "these programs help to expand access to information and services regarding planning to reduce unintended pregnancies, improve infant and child health and reduce mortality rates and decrease maternal deaths associated with childbirth." I should point out that one of the stated goals of USAID is "protecting the environment by stabilizing population growth" - and as everyone knows, terms like "family planning" and "stabilizing population growth" are euphamisms for infanticide.

To be fair, USAID does claim that its funds are not used to promote abortion. However, this contradicts a January Catholic World News report:

A group of Peruvian lawmakers have asked the U.S. government to stop funding organizations that lobby for the legalization of abortion in their country, which U.S. law already forbids.

The letter from 10 members of the Peruvian Congress to Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that an October 2003 conference funded by USAID featured speakers from USAID-funded groups calling the abortion laws in Peru a "social problem" and calling for abortion as a family planning method.

According to LifeSite.net, the aforementioned legislators were concerned about a new law being presented before the Peruvian congress:

In the letter, the members highlight sections of the proposed bill which states that "reproductive health should include measures to promote ... abortion ..." and that "legal barriers to reproductive health include laws prohibiting abortion," and that "reproductive health services such as abortion can only be put into practice when they are carried out in properly equipped facilities that are authorized to perform these procedures." Conference speakers are said to have lamented that the illegality of abortion was a "social problem."

Thomas Jefferson once said, "That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." If conservative Christians really want a pro-life president in office, why are they rallying behind a man who is using their tax dollars to fund the promotion of abortion in third-world countries?

* For a report from the Population Research Institute (PRI) on this subject, click here.