Back in January, President Trump revived the Mexico City policy which prohibits US funding to non-governmental agencies that provide abortions, abortion counselling, or agitate to make abortion legal. Now State has followed up with a directive that imperils some $9 billion in aid money.

Yesterday, the Office of the Spokesperson announced the launch of a new plan, known as “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance,” which would extend the Mexico City policy or ‘gag rule’ to apply to a range of other crucial health services with U.S. support, including programs to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria.

Approved by Secretary Tillerson, the plan would redefine “global health assistance” that’s subject to its anti-abortion rules to include “funding for international health programs, such as those for HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, malaria, global health security, and family planning and reproductive health, [including] global health assistance to, or implemented by, foreign [non-governmental organizations], including those to which a U.S. NGO makes a sub-award with such assistance funds.”
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The Post noted that approximately $6 billion of the impacted funds go to support HIV/AIDS services, mostly in Africa, in accordance with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief created in 2003. Defense grants for global health security issues and the President’s Malaria Initiative, founded under President George W. Bush and amicably continued under President Barack Obama’s reign, will also be impacted. Overall, the Post reported, it will affect “any organization deemed to promote abortion ‘as a method of family planning’ through abortion counseling, referrals, lobbying or public information campaigns.”

Naturally, the pro-aborts are crying Armageddon:

Despite the order’s title and stated intentions, women’s and human rights groups are responding by pointing out that it’s likely to do quite the opposite of protect life. As the Post reflected, requiring health organizations and centers to leave out a comparatively small but critical area of reproductive medicine could lead to the shuttering of much relied-upon health centers around the globe, leaving millions of men, women, and children in the lurch.

According to women’s health experts, the order could also have the opposite effect as intended, and cause more women to have abortions in lieu of prenatal, family planning, and other health care–often with dangerous methods involving wire hangers or even battery acid, according to the Post.

Dear Lord, coat hangers? Are we really going to pull the coat hanger earrings out of the jewelry box?

This is pretty simple and, as the howling tells you, potentially effective.

The most obvious point is that abortion is not health care. Abortion is infanticide. No amount of sugar coating changes that one biological fact. The more obvious point is that if an organization is combating HIV/AIDS or malaria or improving maternal and child health, all they need to do to keep US money is to simply stick to their primary line of business. This is not rocket science. The only logical reasons an organization would elect to cease operations over abortion is that they are trying to make a political point or they are making a lot of money on abortions.