9 - Policing Beyond the Border

Summary

In 1973, by a 52–42 vote, the U.S. Senate adopted the Helms amendment, a law that prohibits the use of federal foreign assistance funding for abortion research and procedures. Congress did not hold a single hearing related to the legislation, despite the seriousness of family planning access and the fact that women’s reproductive healthcare was at stake. Only months before, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the right to terminate a pregnancy was a fundamental constitutional right rooted in privacy and protected under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. In dramatic contrast, the Helms amendment effectively conditioned U.S. foreign aid policy on the antiabortion platform long advocated by the legislation’s author, “the late, stridently antiabortion Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC).” Senator Helms, a former journalist, was a master of rhetoric. He claimed, “My amendment would stop the use of U.S. Government funds to promote and develop ways of killing unborn children.”