Bush's War On Women

Writing in a recent issue of NewStatesman, Kira Cochrane explains that:

[Concerning unsafe abortion, a] report published by the US non-profit agency the Centre for Reproductive Rights includes a typical tale. In Breaking the Silence, an anonymous Kenyan health worker recalls the story of a pregnant 17-year-old [whom] he encountered, "a house-help with no money . . . [who] went to somebody to try to remove the pregnancy. And the person she went to did not know the anus from the vagina. He destroyed her anus, rectum, uterus[,] and some of the small intestine. The girl now has a permanent colostomy."

There's a reason that the health worker chose to remain anonymous, a reason which rests, bizarrely, on the political interests and religious beliefs of a man on another continent.

In January 2001, on his first day in office, President Gworge W. Bush issued an executive order that had lain dormant throughout most of the Clinton administration. The Mexico City Policy, more commonly and descriptively dubbed "the global gag rule," had been instituted by Ronald Reagan in 1984, and represented a tightening of the Helms Amendment of 1973, which had made it unlawful for non-governmental orginizations to use any funds granted by the US Agency for International Development (USaid) either to provide safe abortion (in countries where it is legal) or to lobby for it (in countries where it is not.)

The global gag rule allowed the US to use its huge financial clout and budget . . . to take its anti-abortion stance much further. From the moment it was signed, NGOs receiving any help at all from Usaid -- accepting supplies of condoms, for example -- were explicitly prohibited from using any of their other funding to provide safe abortion or [to] lobby for it.

The prohibition goes so far that NGOs which want to keep their Usaid funding aren't permitted to cite statistics on unsafe abortion. Even telling the stories of women who have been maimed by unsafe procedures would be interpreted as lobbying -- hence the shyness of that Kenyan health worker.

As such, in areas where organizatins accept the gag, the abortion debate is skewed, entirely dominated by anti-abortion voices -- just as Bush intended. (In areas where organisations have refused the gag, the effect is often exactly the same, since loss of funds can force them to close.)

The rule is thus fundamentally undemocratic, and also imperialist -- after all, in countries where abortion is legal, it overrules national sovereignty.

. . .

To give a few examples of the havoc this has wreaked, in 2003 Planned Parenthood of Ghana was forced to close down a programme that had been distributing contraceptives and providing advice on HIV/Aids to an estimated 2.2 million Ghanians. The Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia was forced to close a huge range of outreach programmes after losing more than 30 percent of its external funds, cutting staff and reducing volunteer numbers from 1,000 to 90.

. . .

Ironically, it is likely that the policy may have increased rates of abortion. When clincis close "women don't get other sexual health information or contraceptions," points our Louise Hutchins of the UK group Abortions Rights, "so they're more likely to become pregnant again and suffer from sexually transmitted disease."

. . .

[T]he [gag] rule denies women in developing countires "their humanity. It's disrespectful and undignified and it's based on an idea that women are something other than full human beings." While the gag rule stands. Bush's hands just get bloodier. To find our more, visit www.globalgagrule.org.