Bad Forum for Abortion Politics

As it rushed to adjourn late last week, a weary Congress summoned the energy to perform one final bit of mischief. It voted to kill an arduously negotiated agreement to pay more than $900 million in back dues to the United Nations, and it deleted from a spending bill additional money that is badly needed by the International Monetary Fund as it tries to help a number of Asian nations steer through their economic crises. What lay behind these abrupt actions? Abortion politics, specifically an effort to force upon President Clinton a proposal to deny money to any overseas agency that performs abortions.

This sorry business makes the United States look petty and untrustworthy, as even some of its closest allies in the European Union quickly suggested. And of course the timing could not have been worse. While America was feverishly trying to round up global support for a tough stand against Iraq’s provocations, its elected representatives were casually sabotaging a measure that would have helped the United Nations avoid a major financial crisis. Avoiding fiscal catastrophe in the Asian nations is what the IMF hopes to do by helping to prop up suddenly weakened economies. The U.S. stake in keeping the Asian troubles from reaching our shores should be clear to even the most obtuse member of Congress.

There is a proper place to debate abortion politics. The funding measures killed last week were not that place. What Congress did was self-indulgent, shortsighted, irresponsible, internationally embarrassing and unmistakably harmful to American interests.