Good for Us

AP: Conservatives Step Up Activities Overseas---

NEW YORK - From Peru to the Philippines to Poland, U.S.-based conservative groups are increasingly engaged in abortion and family-planning debates overseas, emboldened by their ties with the Bush administration and eager to compete with more liberal rivals.

The result is that U.S. advocacy groups are now waging their culture war skirmishes worldwide as they try to influence other countries' laws and wrangle over how U.S. aid money should be spent.

"We don't expect to see the United Nations change, or Western Europe change," said Joseph d'Agostino of the Population Research Institute, a Virginia-based anti-abortion group. "But with the Bush administration, pro-lifers feel there's a real opportunity to stop the U.S. government from promoting abortion and sex education and population control in the Third World."

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America said U.S. conservatives are trying to counter the influence long exercised by women's rights and abortion rights groups at U.N. conferences and among international non-governmental organizations.

"NGOs have tremendous power, but for so many years they have been the playground for the leftist activists," Crouse said. "It's only been during the Bush administration that those of us from the right have had an opportunity to be on a level playing field."

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