By Dave Andrusko

Photo: Gage Skidmore
Give the candor/brutally consistency award to pro-abortion Sen. Bernie Sanders for linking climate change, “curbing” population growth, and taxpayer funding of abortions overseas in one answer.
In participating in a CNN Townhall on Climate Change held Wednesday, Sanders heard an audience member state that “Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact” and then be asked, “Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?”
“Yes,” indeedy, responded Sanders, currently one of the top three candidates running to the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nominee. “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.”
After this non-sequitur, Sanders riffed on the Mexico City policy, which the Trump Administration reinstated and then amplified in its 2017 Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy. The objective is to ensure that no U.S. taxpayer money is funneled to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning. To Sanders, this is horrible.
“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.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, the Minority Whip in the House of Representatives, tweeted his strong objection:
During CNN’s #ClimateTownHall, Bernie Sanders said YOUR tax dollars should be used to fund abortions in foreign countries to reduce population size.
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) September 5, 2019
Are you kidding?? That’s horrifying, and tells you just how little regard radical liberals have for innocent life. pic.twitter.com/6yj8e5zzDk
Conservative CNN host S.E. Cupp tweeted
Let’s just state for the record: talking about needing “population control” through ABORTION for the sake of CLIMATE is talking about EUGENICS. The fact that @BernieSanders is willing to entertain this vile idea is not only disgusting, it should be disqualifying.
— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) September 5, 2019
It was, of course, no accident that Sanders talked about birth control and abortion in the same sentence.
Many proponents see abortion as just another form of birth control. Also, the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy says nothing about banning birth control (it’s about U.S. tax dollars and abortion). But by meshing the two, Sanders can imply that the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy doesn’t allow U.S. aid money to be used for birth control, which is not true.