Biden Repeals Ban on Taxpayer Funding for International Abortion Providers
Move has wide-ranging foreign policy implications Getty Images
The Biden administration rescinded a policy Thursday that prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion providers overseas.
The move fulfills a campaign promise from President Joe Biden, who pledged to make repealing the Mexico City policy, referred to by its critics as the Global Gag Rule, one of his first moves in office. Under the Obama administration, the abortion industry received millions of dollars thanks to the repeal of the policy, which was then reinstated under President Donald Trump. The United States Agency for International Development guided tens of millions of dollars in funding to Planned Parenthood and its international affiliates during Barack Obama s time in office.
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BACKGROUND: It is by now commonplace to observe the gradual decline of the norms and institutions upholding international peace and security. This has been a central vector of the criticism of the Trump Administration’s “America First” policy. While this decline has accelerated rapidly in the past four years, it predates the Trump Administration by almost a decade.
A key moment was the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. Moscow proved able to change international boundaries by force, and faced few consequences for it. This in turn informed its takeover of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine six years later, which nevertheless forced a more substantial western response.
The TPP Was All but Dead, Now DC Think Tanks Are Quietly Urging Biden to Bring It Back Comments
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was dead and buried. But now, with the imminent arrival of the new Biden administration, many of the most influential policy groups in Washington are quietly trying to resurrect it.
Writing for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), Joshua Eisenman, the organization’s Senior Fellow in China Studies, argues that it is “time to revisit the TPP,” which has now been rebranded as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Last month, China signed a far-reaching trade agreement with most of the countries of south and east Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand. For many in Washington, this is a warning sign that the Pacific region is slipping out of U.S. control.