Biden Funds a Culture of Death

Following the first Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said Republicans are “not going to win” if they can’t address the abortion issue in 2024. She’s right – and addressing it should start with exposing President Joe Biden’s radical record of promoting abortion at home and around the world.

As soon as he took office, and especially following the Dobbs decision last year, Biden has been one of the foremost apologists for the abortion industry. In June, for instance, Biden’s HHS rescinded funding for the Oklahoma Department of Health over the state’s pro-life laws. The president has also threatened to veto congressional spending bills if they include provisions prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions.

While the Biden administration has been restrained somewhat by the Constitution at home, abroad they have had free reign to pour money into promoting abortion. Two actions in particular stand out: Biden’s revocation of the Mexico City policy, and Biden’s embrace of the World Health Organization (WHO) – both reversals of Trump-era policies.

The Mexico City policy, which was first instituted in 1984, blocks U.S. government funding from going to organizations that provide or promote abortion around the world. Presidents Trump and Bush have instituted the policy, while Presidents Obama and Biden have withdrawn it.

Following the WHO’s blatant dishonesty and capitulation to China during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump initiated a formal withdrawal from the organization on July 7, 2020. The decision looked to be a devastating blow, as over 2018-2019, the U.S. had contributed some $893 million to the WHO – more than twice the amount of the next-highest country, the U.K.

But upon taking office, Biden immediately rejoined the WHO and pledged to “support and strengthen” it. Over Biden’s first two years in office combined, U.S. contributions to the WHO shot up to over $1 billion – a 12 percent increase over the 2018-2019.

Empowered by a fresh influx of American tax dollars thanks to Joe Biden, the WHO kicked off a massive pro-abortion propaganda and pressure campaign in Europe and Africa. In March 2022, the organization released a 210-page “abortion care guideline” reminiscent of Soviet-style brainwashing campaigns for the Communist Party’s political officers.

The WHO document tells its readers, intended to be nurses and doctors around the world, to treat abortion as a “human right” – a notion that more than half the global population rejects as false and illogical. It also urges medical professionals to commit themselves to influencing “national and regional-level policies” in order to establish more lenient abortion laws.

The guideline even provides advice for how readers should practice “social marketing,” which it defines as “the design, implementation and control of programmes seeking to increase acceptability of a social idea or practice in a target group.” In light of the topic of the guideline, the WHO is, in other words, instructing nurses and doctors to become social activists in support of abortion.

Biden implicitly endorsed the policies and recommendations outlined in the WHO’s abortion guideline in a 2021 memo on “protecting women’s health at home and abroad.” One director of a prestigious medical clinic in Europe told this author on the condition of anonymity that the document’s title was perverse, as it tarnishes the idea that medical care should reflect a genuine respect for life. He added that Biden evinced a deviant mentality that was already having visibly terrifying effects in Europe.

Following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO has intensified pressure on many European countries to promote abortion as a legitimate healthcare procedure, particularly in the classroom. After Poland refused to do so and remained one of the few countries in Europe with a complete abortion ban, its ranking on “human rights index” decreased.

Northern Ireland, another heavily Catholic country, has faced similar pressure from the WHO to liberalize its abortion laws. In June, the Irish Parliament adopted a new education law saying that all schools must teach children between the ages of 11 and 16 that they “have a right to abortion.” After passage of the law, Jim Shannon from the Democratic Unionist Party emphasized that “church groups, education authorities, headmasters and even dissenting teachers” were cut off from the negotiations.

The WHO’s pressure campaign is reaping a bloody windfall in other European countries as well. In the U.K., where abortion is permitted until the 17th week of pregnancy, over 123,000 unborn babies were killed from just January to June last year, a 17 percent increase over the previous year.

In Belgium, the leftist Ecolo Party has threatened to revoke doctors’ permission to practice medicine if they refuse to perform abortions.

However, there are some signs that Europeans are beginning to reject the culture of death advanced by the WHO and funded by leftist leaders like Joe Biden. According to data from the Guttmacher Institute, between 2015-2019 abortion rates decreased in Northern, Western, Eastern and Southern Europe by 21, 5, 70, and 49 percent, respectively.

Pope John Paul II once warned Christians and people of goodwill that “whatever is hostile to life itself” must be judged “unworthy of man,” especially abortion, which violates the dignity of the human person and is “intrinsically evil.”

Joe Biden has proven himself hostile to unborn life not just in the United States, but around the world. Americans should remember this as they look ahead to election season next year.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.