Lifting the Global Gag Rule on Day One
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee enacted a bill intended to increase funding for the fight against HIV/AIDS to $50 million over the next five years. Unfortunately, it also may have had the effect of allowing the “Global Gag Rule” to be extended, for the first time ever, to PEPFAR-funded organizations. And even though there are efforts underway to walk this provision back in the AIDS program, it illuminates the larger issue that the “Global Gag Rule” still applies to other U.S. assistance programs.On Day One user Islandchica23 believes that the next president needs to completely reverse the “Global Gag Rule” on day one of their presidency.
Islandchica23 explains: “One of the first things Bush did on his first day in office was to reinstate the ‘Global Gag Rule.’ The Global Gag Rule has cut funding for many, many women’s rights NGOs around the world, thus undermining all women’s rights. I would like to see, as a symbolic and literal opposite of what Bush did on his first day, the new President ‘unsign’ the Global Gag Rule on her or his first day.”
This is a very healthy suggestion. Officially called the “Mexico City Policy,” the Global Gag Rule restricts access to US funds for foreign NGOs that offer comprehensive family planning assistance. This can include counseling services that discuss abortion and even the distribution of contraceptives. So far, a number of NGOs that provide health services to women in the developing world have faced the stark decision between accepting US dollars — and therefore limiting some of their health-critical work — or simply folding up shop. This is not a decision that NGOs operating in places like sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean should be forced to make.
GlobalGagRule.org, an excellent resource for people who want to learn more about the detrimental effects of this policy, keeps tabs on the kinds of services denied to people who need it most. They report, for example, that 1,700 community-based agents in Ghana have been denied the support needed to provide important family planning services to rural communities. HIV/AIDS programs can also be adversely affected by the policy. When family planning organizations refuse to accept the terms of the policy, says GlobalGagRule.org, STD prevention services are undermined and condom supplies diminished because of the loss of U.S. assistance.
This is clearly a counterproductive policy. Not only does it deny critical resources to groups trying to improve the lives and welfare of vulnerable women around the world, but it makes the United States look terrible in the process. Reversing the Global Gag Rule would improve America’s reputation and signal to the rest of the world that the United States is determined to work with, not against, groups dedicated to progressing women’s health around the world.
Reversing the “Global Gag Rule” should be matched with the restoration of proper U.S. funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), as Hillary Clinton has proposed in recent legislation. UNFPA is the largest international program devoted to women’s health and rights and has been central to efforts to improve the lives of women since its inception in 1969. Similar to reversing the “Global Gag Rule,” restoring proper funding to UNFPA, which even the most staunch advocates suggest should only be $60 million a year, would show the world that the U.S. is serious about the rights and livelihoods of women and determined to work with other nations to guarantee them.
Currently the U.S. is the only nation to withhold funding for political reasons.
As the Better World Campaign’s Executive Director, Deborah Derrick leads BWC’s efforts to foster a stronger relationship between the U.S. and UN through outreach and advocacy.
Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
UNFPA Rebuked for Complicity in China’s Forced Abortion Program
(Washington, DC) — With a commanding, overwhelming bipartisan vote of 192-233, the House of Representatives today soundly rejected a bid to subsidize the United Nation’s Population Fund, which has refused to divest itself from coercive population and forced abortion programs in China.
“For 25 years, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has been an aggressive and shameful accessory to gross crimes against women and babies in the Peoples Republic of China,” said Rep. Chris Smith, Vice Chairman of the International Relations Committee. “Despite being admonished to do otherwise on countless occasions, the UNFPA continues to be the chief apologist and enabler for past and ongoing crimes against humanity.”
Smith, who is also co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus, helped lead the floor fight against an amendment offered by Ms. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) that would have suspended all US laws, including human rights laws, in order to permit US-taxpayer funding of the UNFPA. He said the US has withheld funding for the UNFPA for the past several years because of it’s support for China’s forced abortion policy, and he said that today’s 50 vote margin was the strongest rejection of the program yet.
“Let’s not forget that the UNFPA has whitewashed, sanitized, and facilitated–it has been an accomplice–China’s barbaric one child per couple coercive population control program that has victimized hundreds of millions of women and murdered hundreds of millions of children. Brothers and sisters are illegal and children can only be born if, and only if, permission is granted by the state. In China, there is no welcome mat for children and their parents have huge fines imposed upon them if they escape forced abortion and bring their child into this world.
Smith said that in all counties throughout China, including in UNFPA supported counties, severe fines are imposed on women who have babies out of plan. He said some women do resist the harsh economic penalty—euphemistically called a social compensation fee—and are forcibly aborted. He said some are jailed and tortured.
“As violations of human rights go –coercive population control in China is among the worst and most degrading systematic abuse in human history. Last December, I chaired a hearing focused on Mrs. Mao Hen Feng—a Chinese woman who has been imprisoned and tortured because of her resistance to coercive population control.” He added, “ The UNFPA was nowhere to be found in her defense.
“Mrs. Mao—and millions of women like her—needs advocates, not accommodators and enablers of abuse. We must stand with the victims—the oppressed, not with the oppressor. At a minimum, we should not lavish millions of dollars on the friends of the oppressor like the UNFPA,” he said.
Smith concluded by citing the UNFPA’s support for China’s coercive population program as among the worst of the scandalous activities that has rocked the international organization in recent years.
“As scandals go, this may be the UN’s worst. Like the oil for food scandal, or the rape of 13 year old girls by UN Peacekeepers in the Congo, the UNFPA scandal in China must be exposed and stopped. The UNFPA provides political cover, respectability, tangible support and technical capabilities that, predictably, results in massive acts of cruelty and murder in China,” he said.
http://www.house.gov/list/press/nj04_smith/prunpopfundmaloney.html
mrs. mao needs birth control–something made unavailable to many by the gag rule. mr. mao needs birth control, too. it takes two to tango.
the world population keeps increasing, thereby inducing us to fight each other for dwindling resources. there is a humane way to turn that trend around, and eliminating the gag rule is part of it.
I dont need any rule, Bush just makes me gag, period
You could plainly hear the “snap-crackle-pop” getting louder as the Murder god spoke to George just yesterday. G turned to L and said, “Dang, Honey Murder just said to unfund all contraception programs! Seems as if he wants there to be a population surge worldwide. Shucks and Golly! I don’t know if we can kill all the kids that’s in the world right now, much less more of ‘em — better ask Dickman, he’s alittle closer to Murder these days.”
canuckchuck, you are the best.
And is there anything good this administration has done for the world? Not a single little thing?
CD posts provide several valuable services. First and foremost is information regarding the current situations in the broad spectrum of world and national politics, activism and outrage.
And equally as important in the comments, insight, humor, satire, sarcasm, cynicism, and a call to reason and humanity. Thanks to the commited commentators, activists, and readers that expose the truth and keep the hope alive.
It is fun and easy to bash the current administration and others that we find reprehensible, but the insight, reason and call to action found in many of the comments is refreshing and the most valuable aspect. It causes us to think and reason, absorb and modify our beliefs, and not blindly follow the doctrines of others. And to get a chuckle or smile from a like minded soul is icing on the cake.
Keep up the fight!
Representative Chris Smith doesn’t like abortion, family planning or apparently, a rational world where population control is advocated. His opposition to the UNFPA is based on faulty information. China does not have a coercive national policy that is supported by the UN. The entire world would be better off with a one child family goal rather than exhaust our energy supplies and starve by the billions.