In a CNN town hall on climate change, Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stated that he supported the use of United States federal aid to help fund abortions in low-income countries.An audience member asked this question of Bernie Sanders:
“Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact. Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?”
To which he responded,
"Well the answer is yes. And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies, and make reproductive decisions.
“And the Mexico City agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that are — that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd.
“So I think, especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies, and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, it’s something I very, very strongly support.”
Several conservative voices have compared this statement with eugenics, a policy that restricts reproduction in order to prevent undesirable characteristics from becoming more widespread in the gene pool. The idea has been connected to racists throughout history who would prefer to limit the reproduction of those from a different race or a lower class. Because Africa has several countries with low incomes and high fertility rates, a policy like this could target African preborn children far more than other races. Click here for more.