Health before ideology

Ronald Reagan started it, and Bill Clinton stopped it. George W. Bush reinstated it, and now Barack Obama is reversing it. As much as Obama is right to overturn the ban on funding for foreign aid groups that provide or even mention abortions, it’s time to end the eight-year whiplash cycle for nonprofits. Congress should make it law that this country will fund abortion services as part of its international health aid.

President Bush’s long campaign to preach abstinence instead of providing information and access to family planning, both domestically and overseas, was already beginning to implode when Congress refused to continue funding abstinence-only sex education in U.S. schools, which has been shown in numerous studies to be ineffective.

And although Bush supported a laudable program to provide AIDS treatment in Africa, he spent more money there promoting marital fidelity than condoms, and kept the funding flat for contraception that would have prevented AIDS transmission and unwanted pregnancies among women already ill from HIV infection. Meanwhile, any nonprofit that so much as suggested abortion to desperate women overseas, or that gave referrals to abortion providers, could receive no U.S. money, even if such services were paid for by other sources.

These funding priorities reflected a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the conditions confronting women in Africa and other poor regions -- millions of them married off each year before the age of 18, with no control over whether their husbands use condoms or engage in extramarital sex.

The Bush administration also refused to support the U.N. Population Fund, which provides maternal health and family planning services in 141 nations, based on accusations that the fund backed or participated in coerced abortions in China. This continued even after a State Department investigation found no evidence of such backing.

We’re glad to see the pendulum swing back again, and we expect this to be just a first step toward correcting years of ineffective, moralistic policies that sought to roll back reproductive rights at the expense of women’s health. Access to safe and legal abortion is one of those rights; better yet, when women have ready and affordable access to contraception, abortion rates drop. The best scenario would be congressional action that positions this country for the long term to favor global health over ideological convictions.