The Week

• We do not expect to miss Barack Obama, but we wish he’d give us a chance.

• Ronald Reagan first imposed the “Mexico City policy,” which blocks foreign-aid money from going to organizations that perform abortions or advocate their legalization overseas. Every Democratic president elected since then has rescinded the policy, and every Republican following a Democrat has restored it. President Trump became the latest to reinstate the policy. Liberals made two main criticisms of the policy. The first is that it amounted to a “global gag rule” preventing foreign-aid recipients from even talking about abortion: an assertion that neither the text of Trump’s executive order nor past implementation of the Mexico City policy corroborates. The second is that the World Health Organization had found that the policy actually increased abortion rates in sub-Saharan Africa by reducing access to contraception. The study relies on a data set full of holes, but even it showed contraceptive use increasing during the period. Contemporary liberals remain strongly committed to abortion, and nearly as strongly committed to making other people pay for it.