In 1984 during a United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City President Reagan announced
In 1984, during a United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City, President Reagan announced the intention to impose tighter restrictions on United States aid to population control programs abroad. ... The document stated “The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) calls for legal protection for children before as well as after birth, and the United States accordingly does not consider abortion an acceptable element of family planning programs and will not contribute to those of which it is a part.” The Policy, known there after as the Mexico City Policy, restricts foreign, non-governmental organizations that receive USAID family planning funds in three ways. ... This causes organizations only slightly involved in abortion services to be denied money for important medical research programs that the United States wants to support. ... A prime example of this is a clinic in Bangladesh, which was turning away women suffering from infections and other complications that stemmed from abortions, because it mistakenly believed that the United States development agency prohibited treatment. ... The main effect of the Mexico City Policy is that it removes funding from family planning programs around the world. ... In 1988, four years after the Policy was put into effect, it was found in a study done by the Washington based Population Crisis Committee that “at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, doctors were admitting between 50 to 70 septic abortion cases a day” . ... Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, contraceptives were not widely available in Russia, and “the average Soviet woman would terminate between five and seven pregnancies during her reproductive years… Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, contraceptive use has increased by 5 percent, and the abortion rate has dropped by a dramatic 800,000 per year. ... In turn “the major cause of infant deaths during the first 28 days of their lives is low birth weight. ... In some cases the United States support of international family planning can be a matter of the life or death of women in developing countries. Because of the Mexico City Policy Nepal has been denied USAID family planning funds, which will lead to a loss of almost $250,000. ... But the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule prevents advocating to legalize abortion. ... ” In Nepal and all over the world the Mexico City policy threatens efforts aimed at reducing mortality rates and improving access to basic health care. ... And most of these individuals live in developing nations. ... ” The Restrictions of the Mexico City Policy were never enacted into law but were enforced as executive branch policy from 1984 until President Clinton repealed them in his first few days of office in early 1993. President Clinton felt that private, foreign organizations should be able to receive US AID funding for the part of their programs that involved pregnancy prevention, even though they used their funds raised elsewhere to finance abortions or to appeal for abortion reform.