The true costs of the Global Gag Rule may never be known. But it’s done with for now thanks to President Obama who reversed it in January. Two hundred and fifty health and human rights organizations from around the world sent him a signed letter of thanks.
Poor reproductive health is the leading cause of death among women in developing countries. Hundreds of thousands have died and many more have suffered.
In Kenya alone, it is estimated that 5000 women die every year from unsafe abortions. The Center for Reproductive Rights says one in seven women in Peru are hospitalized from back alley abortions. This was in 2003.
Ever since President Bush reinstated the ideologically driven anti-abortion policy in January 2001, hundreds of non-governmental organizations who receive United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding have had to shut down family planning operations or close altogether.
The policy also prohibited organizations who provided abortion related information or services from obtaining female and male condoms, birth control pills, and intra-uterin devices.
USAID’s economic blackmail discriminated against poor women in developing countries. Blood is on their hands. The gag rule has resulted in more deaths and more abortions.
The London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) says 36 million unplanned pregnancies and 15 million induced abortions occurred over the past eight years.
“It has undermined health systems and endangered the lives and health of the poorest and most vulnerable women on the planet by denying access to life saving family planning, sexual and reproductive health and HIV services and exposing them to the dangers of unsafe abortion.” - Dr Gill Greer of IPPF
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The author here is remarkably devoid of facts to prove hir or her case so speculation is substituted. Yes, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a London-based NGO that employs highly paid Westerners, was cut off from funding under the rule, but whether they get funded or not doesn’t have much of an impact on those poor Kenyans the author writes about. By the time the IPPF and friends have taken their consulting fees, overhead, stays in 4-star hotels, there isn’t much left for the Kenyans anyway. Another outfit affeted by the rule, Marie Stopes International, is also UK-based and run by overpaid westerners. It has the additional problem of having been founded by Dr. Tim Black, who is a co-owner and member of the board of directors of a firm that produces 75 pornographic videos a year. It is foolish foreign policy for the Obama adminstration to be wrokign toward re-establishing their foreign policy “partnership” with the pornography industry.
There are lots of sound, effective and noncontroversial ways to promote family planning. We ought to be doing them instead of allying the US with controversial groups in foriegn countries.
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