Though it may come as no surprise to pro-life Americans, the Obama administration appears to have used American tax dollars to push pro-abortion policies on pro-life nations.

Breitbart reports State Department official Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that past presidential administrations withheld aid to countries in sub-Saharan Africa as a way of influencing them to support the killing of unborn babies.

Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, spoke about these concerning past actions during the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, hosted by the State Department in Washington, D.C.

“Our U.S. taxpayer dollars are used to discourage Christian values in other democratic countries. It was stunning to me that my government under a previous administration would go to folks in sub-Saharan Africa and say, ‘We know that you have a law against abortion, but if you enforce that law, you’re not going to get any of our money,’” Mulvaney said.

He described these actions as a form of religious persecution.

“… That is a different type of religious persecution that I never expected to see. I never expected to see that as an American Christian,” Mulvaney said.

According to the report:

Mulvaney noted that American taxpayers’ dollars were offered and denied depending on whether the countries in question rejected what he referred to as “Christian values” but specified as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. … While Mulvaney did not specify which previous administration he referred to, the most recent to do so prior to the Trump administration was that of former President Barack Obama. The Obama administration highlighted its support for expanding abortion rights – including the spending of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars towards that end under the guise of “reproductive health” – under a policy “fact sheet.”

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Contrary to the narrative of the mainstream media, America has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the world. The United States is one of only seven countries that allows elective abortions past 20 weeks — a fact confirmed by the Washington Post fact checker.

Many nations still recognize that unborn babies deserve a right to life, at least in most circumstances. But increasingly, pro-life nations are being pressured by European and U.S. politicians and American billionaires to legalize the killing of unborn babies for basically any reason up to birth. In May, Ireland, once a strongly pro-life nation, caved into this pressure and voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment of its Constitution, which protects unborn babies’ right to life.