I do feel the same way, particularly in cases where the aid involves disaster relief. If aid workers distributing food to starving people in a country where discussion of abortion was illegal broke that law, they could cause the entire effort to be shut down. There would be no reason for workers in a disaster relief effort to step into that arena, it has no relevance to what they would be there to do and could invite a backlash that would jeopardize the entire relief effort. Not acceptable.
If an aid agency, for example, is working specifically with population control or reproductive health issues, the picture becomes cloudier, though I would still say that extreme discretion would have to be applied, and the law should not be broken (civil disobedience may be admirable in one's own country; it is much less so in someone else's). It would be acceptable in some situations for an aid organization to debate whether abortion ought to be illegal, just as it might be in some situations acceptable for an aid organization to debate whether evangelization ought to be banned, though it is a wee bit harder to see how religious freedom is an appropriate issue for an aid agency to be involved with. It would not be acceptable to offer abortions where they are illegal, or to evangelize where it is illegal. There is a distinction, which I assume you recognize, between breaking a law and recommending that the law be changed. Even the latter, though, is something that has to be approached carefully: people with big mouths who charge into other countries telling people what to do generally do not accomplish their objectives, however laudable or revolting those objectives may be.
Official and quasi-official bodies have to uphold a pretty rigorous standard. For example: I think the idea of forcing women to wear veils is a stupid relic and evidence of thoroughly medieval mindset, but if we were to send a woman on a diplomatic mission to a country where that mindset was law, she would have to wear the damned thing, stupid or not. |
