Trump reinstates ‘Mexico City policy’ ban on funding international abortions

CNA Staff, Jan 25, 2025 / 07:39 am

President Donald Trump has reinstated the “Mexico City policy,” a long-standing ban on government funding of foreign organizations that provide and promote abortions.

The president on Friday issued an executive order revoking former President Joe Biden’s 2021 directive that had axed the decades-old policy.

The rule was first put in place by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and has been rescinded by every Democratic president — and re-implemented by every Republican one — since then. Trump had expanded the rule in his first term to cover several new government health initiatives.

The rule forbids taxpayer funding of foreign nongovernmental organizations that promote or perform abortions as family planning. Foreign governments and some international groups are exempt from the rule.

The measure was first announced by the U.S. in 1984 at the second International Conference on Population in Mexico City, leading to its long-standing popular name.

The directive comes amid a flurry of executive orders issued by Trump during his first week in office. The president has given directives on policies including climate, the death penalty, immigration, and transgenderism, some of which have been criticized by the U.S. bishops.

Friday’s order received praise from pro-life advocates. “GREAT move by President Trump reinstating the Mexico City policy, which ensures American taxpayers do NOT fund the killing of babies overseas!” Live Action founder Lila Rose wrote on X on Friday evening. 

“Life is winning in America,” Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, also wrote on X. 

Ahead of the Friday order, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith told CNA that he expected the reinstated rule would allow Congress to perform a full review of international programs receiving federal funding. 

“We have great hopes and expectations,” he told CNA. “There needs to be a top-to-bottom review of these programs. We need to ask: What are they doing with the money?”

Smith, who took office in 1981, said he was an original champion of the Mexico City rule when President Ronald Reagan first implemented it. He argued for the need for strict oversight of federal money flowing to international groups, pointing to the recent scandal in which funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief were used to supply abortions in Mozambique. 

Those abortions, Smith said, are “absolutely the tip of the iceberg.” He predicted a “big fight this year” by pro-life advocates seeking to bar federal international funding of abortion. 

The move was not without criticism. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, in a statement on Friday night claimed the Mexico City rule was a “dangerous policy” that restricts “lifesaving reproductive health services.” 

Predicting further pro-life moves from the Trump administration, Murray vowed that Democrats “will fight back every way we can.” 

In a separate order on Friday, Trump rolled back what he said were directives from the Biden administration that had violated the long-standing Hyde Amendment, which broadly forbids federal funds from being used to pay for abortions in the U.S. 

That amendment first took effect in 1980, but the Biden administration “disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of federal programs,” Trump said on Friday.