The Book of Ron Paul 1997 Ron Paul Chapter 80 Amendment No. 32 Offered By Mr. Paul 3 September 1997 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record (Page H6731)   Cached

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1997 Ron Paul 80:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. 1997 Ron Paul 80:2 The Clerk read as follows: Amendment No. 32 offered by Mr. PAUL: After the last section (preceding the short title), insert the following: LIMITATION ON FUNDS FOR ABORTION, FAMILY PLANNING, OR POPULATION CONTROL EFFORTS Sec. 572. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available for— (1) population control or population planning programs; (2) family planning activities; or (3) abortion procedures. 1997 Ron Paul 80:3 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, the amendment is very clear. If the amendment passes, no funds in this bill could be used for population control, family planning, or abortion procedures. That will take in about $385 million that we could save by passing this amendment. 1997 Ron Paul 80:4 The most important part of this amendment would be that we would absolutely assure that none of the funding would ever be used for abortion. One of the ways that the funds get to abortion, to the use of abortion, is that the funds are granted for birth control, and then the funds elsewhere can be saved, and those other funds can be used for abortion. In other words, it can be the funds are fungible. 1997 Ron Paul 80:5 It is claimed that people have a need for birth control, and this may be true, but we have not been well received around the world. I am not quite sure exactly when the U.S. Government and the American taxpayer got involved in the birth control business overseas, but we have been doing it now probably for several decades. But there is a lot of resentment toward America imposing our will on other people. 1997 Ron Paul 80:6 For instance, we have sent over the use of Norplant, a very controversial medical procedure. I am a gynecologist, and I can attest to it. It is very controversial, yet it was used on hundreds of thousands of women overseas. When that procedure was finally brought to the United States, it was rejected by the American people. 1997 Ron Paul 80:7 I, as a gynecologist, spent more time taking these Norplants out than putting them in because of the severe complications with them, but nevertheless we, as taxpayers, have continuously sent more funding overseas to support these procedures. 1997 Ron Paul 80:8 But there is no moral justification for us in the U.S. Congress to go and tax poor people in America, to go over and impose our ideas and our beliefs on other people’s culture, and we have been doing this now for several decades, and a lot of resentment has been building up. There is no constitutional authority for programs like this. There is nowhere in the Constitution where we can find any justification for us imposing our will on other people in this manner. 1997 Ron Paul 80:9 But worst of all, if funds are used for birth control and other funds are saved and then they are used on abortion, it is in a way indirectly supporting abortion. 1997 Ron Paul 80:10 Later on we will vote on another amendment to curtail the use of funds for abortion, and I will support the amendment of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. SMITH] in this regard because we hope that that would at least help, but one way where we can assure and not worry about it would be to pass this amendment and not send any money over in the first place because it is not authorized, it is not permissible, it is not moral, and there is a lot of resentment toward us for these very, very reasons. 1997 Ron Paul 80:11 The issue that always comes up is that the people need help, but there are a lot of voluntary associations in this country that are willing to help. If we feel compelled to help poor nations in their birth control effort, it can be done through voluntary means, not through coercion, not taking by force money from people who have philosophic and religious and social beliefs against these programs that we are imposing on others. 1997 Ron Paul 80:12 So this is a program that should be just abolished. It should be stopped. We should not send any funds over there. This argument that we can control the way funds are being spent once they are overseas, we are kidding ourselves when we use that argument. We really lose control of these funds once they get into the hands of other governments or agencies that are dealing with these problems overseas. 1997 Ron Paul 80:13 Typically, programs that are run by governments and international governments do not work very well, and these programs have done very poorly. At the same time, there are poor countries around the world that have car loads, millions, of condoms sitting around that are not used. They cannot get surgical gloves to do surgical procedures. There are countries reported in Africa where they do not have penicillin, and yet they have all the birth control pills that they want. 1997 Ron Paul 80:14 So I argue that this program is unnecessary, unconstitutional, it is an abuse of the rights and beliefs of so many Americans, and it is not well received overseas. The best thing we can do is just take the money away from these programs, take the $385 million and return it to the American taxpayers. This would be a far better way to use this money other than aggravating, antagonizing people in other countries. 1997 Ron Paul 80:15 What would we think if some foreign government came over and decided that our inner cities were over-populated and they wanted to impose some population controls and some birth control methods on the inner cities? I am sure there would be a strong objection to that.

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