Challenge to a Reckless Policy

Efforts of the Reagan Administration to impose its dislike of abortion on all international family-planning organization have run into a court challenge that yet may halt the ill-advised and reckless policy.

The latest target of cutbacks is the Family Planning International Assistance program of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a program that has won high praise for its effectiveness and for its ability to extend family-planning programs in Third World areas where there has been only limited service.

But Planned Parenthood has refused to adhere to the Reagan policy requirement that bars federal money for any agency that may, with its own or other non-federal resources, offer abortion-related counseling or services. We think that Planned Parenthood was correct in resisting this effort to impose ideology on professional groups. This has nothing to do with the longstanding prohibition against using U.S. government money for abortion-related services. That congressional mandate has been respected. The anti-abortion policy is now being invoked within the United States to try to force domestic organizations to eliminate all abortion-related services. The terrible paradox is that the Reagan policy is increasing the need for abortions by limiting the activities of some of the most effective agencies providing contraceptives.

Fortunately, a federal appeals court has ruled for Planned Parenthood and ordered that its challenge to the policy go to trial in the U.S. District Court on a crucial constitutional issue. Planned Parenthood argues that these restrictions, imposed by the Agency for International Development, abridge its First Amendment rights. So they do.

The Reagan Administration has given strong support to foreign aid for population activities. Since AID began the population program in 1965, it has provided about $3.4 billion in services and contraceptives--more than half of that in the seven years of the Reagan Administration. Annual funding has gone up from $190 million in 1981 to a peak of $234.6 million last year, and will surpass $230 million this year.

That constructive record makes all the more regrettable the decision to use the power of American foreign aid to further the President’s crusade against abortion--a crusade that is purely personal, based neither on law nor on the sanction of public opinion.

In the meantime Planned Parenthood has scheduled over the next eight months the close-out of its successful and effective five-year $69-million international program. About $6.7 million remains to be spent. Planned Parenthood had proposed a five-year $97.9-million extension, but unless the district court upholds Planned Parenthood’s eligibility, that will be rejected. And the real losers will be the people of Latin America, Africa and Asia--desperate for this help--who will suffer the inevitable dislocations as new agencies move in to try to continue the work.