Obama Revokes Gag Rule

Two days after becoming America’s 44th President, Barack Obama took a stand for women all over the world by repealing the global gag rule. The global gag rule states that any nongovernmental organization in another country receiving federal funds is not allowed to support any form of abortion services. The gag rule was started by Reagan in the 1980s, continued by George H.W. Bush, repealed by Bill Clinton, and then reinstituted by George W. Bush in 2001. Gag rule support is strictly divided among party lines: when a republican becomes president, he puts it into effect, while when a democrat is elected, he removes it.

The global gag rule is known as “The Mexico City Policy”, named after the city where Reagan first introduced it in 1984. Alan Keyes, Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State, developed the policy’s final language. Exactly twenty years after Keyes’ establishment of the gag rule, he ran for an Illinois Senate seat- against Barack Obama- and lost, to the now sitting President. It is a small, tangled world in American politics: the man who once defeated Keyes in a Congressional election, has now revoked the policy he enacted 25 years ago.

The global gag rule politicizes women’s bodies and jeopardizes their health. The rule does not just affect American money. If a foreign NGO accepts a single penny of U.S. federal money, it can not provide abortion services- even if most of the organization’s revenue is not American-aid. So, if America contributes to only 10% of an NGO’s revenue, the organization becomes restricted in how it uses 100% of its money!

Republican administrations have enforced this rule as a way to promote abstinence-only education around the world. To cut down the number of abortions, they think that all they have to do is stop funding them. What they don’t mention is that women still have abortions; they are just much riskier to their health: “Ipas, an international organization that works to prevent abortion-related deaths, estimates that more than 500,000 women have died from unsafe abortions during the eight-year tenure of the Bush administration because they have not had access to legal and safe abortions,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Obama’s repeal of the gag rule means that organizations in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, among others, will have their American-aid returned to them. They can go back to providing family planning services and supplying contraception to needy women. Obama is showing the rest of the world that America has returned to its moral obligation in protecting women’s health and human rights.

Sources:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/25/EDDS15G5IF.DTL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_gag_rule