Congress Cuts Foreign Family Planning Aid

In the latest tactical victory by a resurgent American anti-abortion movement, Congress has forced a drastic cut in American aid programs that are the mainstay of family planning programs in poor countries around the world. The cutback, intended to punish the Clinton administration for refusing to withhold aid from family planning groups that promote abortions overseas, would cut 35 percent from the population and family planning budget of the Agency for International Development, the largest supporter of such programs in the world.

Family planning experts at the agency and many of the private organizations who depend on the funding say the cut would be a crippling blow, not only to birth control but to such related activities as prenatal health care and AIDS prevention in the world’s most impoverished countries.