Bush reinstates ban on international family planning funds

New administration changes balance of power on abortion issue

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- On the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, President Bush signed an executive order Monday banning federal funds to international family planning groups that offer abortion or abortion counseling.

"It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion either here or abroad," Bush states in the order.

The order prohibits the allocation of U.S. funds to groups who support abortion, either by performing the procedure, or offering abortion counseling or lobbying governments abroad.

The move reinstates a ban lifted in 1993 by Bush's predecessor, former President Clinton. The policy was first established in 1984 by President Reagan.

Bush said earlier Monday he would reinstate the ban "soon." Asked whether he would consider a similar ban on fetal tissue research, the president said, "I'll deal with that issue later."

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Special Report: Roe vs. Wade 25 Years Later

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said in a statement that Bush is committed to maintaining funding levels for non-government organizations in order to prevent abortion by providing "quality voluntary family planning services."

The current FY 2001 budget appropriation is $425 million for these programs. Their funding is contained in the foreign operations appropriations bill.

"The President's clear intention is that any restrictions do not limit organizations from treating injuries or illnesses caused by legal or illegal abortions, for example, post abortion care," Fleischer said. "This position is allowed under previous policies that have had wide congressional support."

The order was not unexpected, but it would likely worsen tensions with abortion rights advocates already angered by the selection of abortion opponents John Ashcroft for attorney general and Tommy Thompson for secretary of health and human services.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups hailed the new administration's active opposition to abortion as they marked Monday's anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that struck down state laws banning the procedure, with marches and protests.

Bush's order is a strong symbolic move, as was his statement to abortion opponents' rally Monday afternoon.

In a written statement, read by New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, Bush said the promise of a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence "are for everyone, including unborn children."

"We share a great goal, to work toward a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law," Bush said. "We know this will not come easily, or all at once. But the goal leads us onward: to build a culture of life, affirming that every person, at every stage and season of life, is created equal in God's image."

Rep. Chris Smith

In the final days of the Clinton administration, the Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion drug RU-486, and Clinton twice vetoed bills that would have banned a type of late-term abortion that opponents referred to as "partial-birth" abortion. Reversing the ban Bush restored Monday was one of Clinton's first actions as president.

"At the end of the Clinton era, the pro-life movement is stronger than ever," National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz said Monday.

Ohio GOP Rep. Steve Chabot said the ban on so-called "partial birth" abortion would be introduced again, and sounded confident that Bush would not veto it. The president has said that if Congress sent him such a measure, he would sign it.

National Right to Life Committee's Brian Johnston

Franz's colleague at the National Right to Life Committee, Brian Johnston, said he was hopeful the Bush administration would "pull back the abortion mentality that the past administration was fostering and giving our tax money to."

"The fact is the majority of Americans, when they know the facts about Roe v. Wade -- when they know what it really does -- they don't like it, either," Johnston said. "They want some kind of restrictions on abortions. So this is a man in the president who has a staff and an attorney general that are gonna follow his lead, and he wants to do this in a civil manner."

Abortion rights groups decry Bush move

Supporters of abortion rights marked the anniversary by warning that the freedoms granted in the Roe decision were now under threat by a Republican administration and a Republican-controlled Congress. Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said Bush "is bending to the will of the far right on these issues."

"He so quickly shed his facade and his cloak of moderation on this issue," she said. Bush was "using his presidential powers quite aggressively already to undermine a woman's right to choose."

Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League

Added Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America: "The fundamental human and civil right to make our own childbearing choices without government intervention is more threatened now than it has been in all of the 28 years since Roe v. Wade was decided."

During the presidential campaign, Bush made it clear that he felt the 1973 decision went too far. Last week, his wife Laura said on NBC's Today show that she did not believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned, but stressed that she agrees with her husband's support of abstinence education and believes the number of abortions in the United States should be reduced.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimate that at least 1.2 million abortions are performed in the United States each year. Another estimate from the Alan Guttmacher Institute places that figure at 1.37 million. Of those, 88 percent occur in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.

Late-term abortions performed in the United States number between 350 and 500, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Every American who is concerned about his or her own reproductive rights, or who has a daughter or a granddaughter whose future they will be concerned about, need to take action right now," Feldt said.

Abortion rights supporters kept a lower profile Monday than their opponents on the streets of Washington, but put a great deal of effort into lobbying on Capitol Hill to block the nomination of Ashcroft as attorney general. Ashcroft, a religious conservative who has made opposition to abortion a hallmark of his career, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week he could nevertheless act to enforce current law on the matter.

Like many of his critics, Feldt expressed skepticism about that declaration Monday.

"For John Aschroft -- a man who has spent his entire political career trying to make sure that women do not have the right to choose -- women do not have this fundamental human and civil right to decide for ourselves whether and when to have children," Feldt said. "I think it's a bit of a reach to think he can just turn off that spigot now and decide, 'Oh, well, I didn't really mean it -- I am no longer against a woman's right to choose.' "

CNN Correspondents John King, Major Garrett and Eileen O'Connor and The Associated Press contributed to this report.