Hard-Line Stand

Cutting aid to stop abortion

Although the U.S. has long sought to ease the problem of overpopulation in the Third World, federal law bans the use of U.S. funds to finance abortions overseas. The Reagan Administration is now considering an even more stringent policy: withholding family-planning assistance from any population-control program funded by governments or private organizations that sanction abortion as a method of birth control. The plan was hailed by pro-life groups, but it has perplexed foreign aid experts, State Department officials and population control groups.

Reagan advisers in the Office of Policy Development drew up the severe new proposal for review by governmental agencies in May. Its announced purpose:to serve as a position paper for a United Nations conference on population that begins in Mexico City on Aug. 6. The draft policy, however, seems primarily aimed at the Republican Convention in Dallas, which opens two weeks later. Reagan's pro-life supporters have long been lobbying the President for strong action against abortion.

Some conservative Congressmen have rallied around the new plan, which officials from the Agency for International Development have calculated could slash U.S. aid to family-planning programs by as much as half, to $120 million a year. State Department officials fear that the proposal could lead to sharp and embarrassing attacks on the U.S. at the Mexico City conference and further diplomatic setbacks in America's uneasy relations with China and India.

Demographers question the Administration's statement that unchecked population growth is not necessarily a major obstacle to Third World progress. That view contradicts most development studies. Instead, the White House faulted state-controlled economies, arguing that only a free-market system raises living standards, causing birth rates to fall and eliminating the need for birth control programs.

White House officials have already begun sounding out the State Department and AID in preparation for a watered-down compromise of the anti-abortion proposal. By the time the statement is ironed out for presentation in Mexico City, it is very likely that aid cutoffs will be less severe than currently proposed. In fact, a draft now being circulated at the White House deletes the cutoffs entirely. Nonetheless, the Administration's strong opposition to abortion is not liable to change. As the election approaches, the President's men seem determined to bring population policy abroad more fully into line with the views of anti-abortion voters at home.