This post below has led to a conversation about the United States’ international family planning policies, and how what we do impacts women abroad. This is what I hope to go into as a career, so it’s obviously of particular interest to me, and important enough that I think it deserves its own post.
Here’s what gets me about the Global Gag Rule: It’s about as anti-life as you can get. It kills and maims women and children. It limits free speech. It doesn’t do anything to stop abortion from happening, it only makes them more dangerous. It also greatly impacts HIV/AIDS prevention and pre-natal and well-baby care. In developing nations, a single under-staffed and under-funded clinic commonly serves multiple wide-spread communities. Under a single roof women and men get their pre-natal and well-baby care, family planning tools, and HIV/AIDS prevention, education and treatment. Cutting funding because the parent organization of that clinic supports reproductive rights effectively cuts off all these other services.
A good resource on the rule is here.
Bush imposed the Global Gag Rule during his first week of office. The rule bars U.S. funding from going to any organization that:
-Pays for abortions with its own, non-U.S. funds
-Tells women that legal abortion is an option, or so much as mentions abortion
-Lobbies their own government for reproductive rights.
As I mentioned in the comments of the previous post, the Hyde Amendment has prevented any U.S. money from paying for abortions since the 1970s. Direct funding of abortion isn’t the issue. Under the rule, an organization that sees the horrors of illegal abortion — Peruvian healthcare workers, for example, who are horrified by the fact that one in three hospital beds in their country is filled with a woman who underwent a botched illegal procedure — and tries to lobby for abortion rights will see all their funds cut.
Why is international family planning important? I’ve written about this before, but I’ll re-state the big points:
*350 million people in developing nations lack access to contraception, resulting in 52 million unplanned pregnancies last year alone. Half of these pregnancies ended in abortion.
*Because reproductive health care clinics often provide multiple services, the gag rule has further resulted in increasing maternal mortality and cutting off access to pre-natal and well-baby care. About a third of women worldwide receive no pre-natal care, and 60 percent of births take place outside of hospitals.
*In some of the poorest countries like Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, it is estimated that up to 50 percent of maternal mortalities result from unsafe, illegal abortions. In sub-Saharan Africa, 920 women die for every 100,000 live births. The number for Europe, on the other hand, is 24.
*Increasing access to contraception for all the women who want it could prevent 22 million abortions, 23 million unplanned births, and 1.4 million infant deaths. $3.9 billion dollars — less than four days of the Pentagon’s budget — could prevent 142,000 pregnancy-related deaths annually.
*USAID condom shipments have been scaled back or cut off completely to 29 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East because of the gag rule, further exacerbating the internation HIV/AIDS crisis
*137 million women worldwide who want to delay another birth or avoid pregnancy do not have access to contraception. 64 million women use contraception that is not the most effective available.
*Women in the richest fifth of the population are five times more likely to have access to and use contraception than women in the poorest fifth
Statistics are important, but so are the stories of women who live under this rule every day. Hillary Fyfe, for example, runs an abstinence-based HIV prevention group called Family Life Movement in Zambia, and lost $30,000 in U.S. funding due to Bush’s policies. Fyfe has seen women inducing abortions by “swallowing pounded glass, pushing sharp needles or other unsafe instruments through their uterus, pushing poisonous substances up their vaginas like cuttings from trees or roots, drinking bleach mixed with glass, or overdosing on malaria pills.”
“All of the above end up with the death of both mother and child,” Fyfe writes. “Or the child dies and the mother is crippled for life. These cases are a daily occurrence.”
The Gag Rule is not pro-life. It’s unconstitutional, un-American and it’s deadly. I’ll be adding more to this post later.
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Honey, Bush didn’t reimpose the gag rule during his first week in office – he did it on the FIRST DAY. I remember sitting at my computer on the first workday of the new Administration (I’m a federal worker), seeing the headline in the Washington Post, and thinking “it’s gonna be a long four years.”
How is the gag rule unconstitutional? No where in the Constitution does it say that the federal government has to provide aid to international family planning organizations.
Hey, Jill, is it ok if I repeat (with some minor edits) my post from the “is this pro-life” thread?
The Boxer Amendment No. 278 would have ended the Mexico City Policy, which denies US funds to any organization that either performs or promotes abortions. It passed the Senate 52-46 earlier this year.
http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/issues/votes/?votenum=83&chamber=S&congress=1091
(Note: Republicans Stevens, Murkowski, Warner, Specter, Snowe, Collins, Smith and Chafee voted aye; pro-life Democrats Nelson of NE, Reid and Pryor voted aye as well. Smith is the only pro-life Republican who voted aye.)
It wouldn’t pass the house and even if it did it would get vetoed.
I do agree with Andrew (hope he’s not offended), how is the global gag rule unconstitutional? I’m not aware that there’s anything in the constitution that mandates aid to other countries, from my shaky understanding of US history, early US foreign policy was fairly hands-off. Feel free to elaborate.
Andrew,
The policy infringes on free speech. Maybe it does it indirectly, but it does it nonetheless. If a clinic even acknowledges the concept of abortion – and yet does not perform the procedure – they still lose the funds.
The fundies like to keep people ignorant; god forbid someone should be given a choice and choose the option that the fundies dislike.
Andrew, the issue is: if the United States provides assistance to international family planning organizations, is it constitutional to deny funding to those US organizations and individuals that exercise free speech by discussing birth control and/or abortion? I think it is clearly stupid to limit funds to groups that provide information like this, but beyond that, I can make a good argument that it is is a violation of the freedom of speech clause to deny funds because a group either organized under US laws or composed of US citizens gives out information to which the government disagrees while approving funds to groups that only say what the government wants to hear.
This issue is not whether the US is required to support international family planning organizations, but rather if it does support such activities, is it allowed to discriminate against US citizens who exercise the right of free speech to give out health-related information.
With regard to non-US organizations, the question is whether the US should limit their speech in ways that it can’t limit US citizens.
Of course, the real issue isn’t constitutional, it is one of public health – trying to have the greatest impact on the health of women and children in the developing world, and it seems obvious that the Bush policy fails in that respect.
i remember fairly early in the 2004 presidential campaign, some reporter asked john kerry if he were elected, what was the first thing he would do in office. he answered, reverse the Mexico City policy.
i remember thinking, hey, this could be our guy!
but it was pretty much all downhill from there.
I meant that if Bush tried to apply it in the United States, it would never hold up because it would be unconstitutional. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I think we all missed a bet in 2004 by not pointing out long and loud how Bush obviously hates women – especially women of color. He makes all his odious remarks about a “culture of life” while producing a vile parody of same. The amount of human suffering all over the globe that can be laid at his feet is truly appalling
And how would it be unconstitutional if this policy was applied domestically? Some states, such as Missouri, have laws similar to the Mexico City Policy, yet they have been upheld in court.
How does Bush hate women and blacks? Opposing reverse discrimination and state-funded abortions doesn’t make him a racist or sexist.
And the suffering in Iraq is not only Bush’s fault. The 81 House Democrats and 29 Senate Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who voted in favor of the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq share much of the responsibility for what is happening in Iraq.
It’s the law in Missouri that certain organizations cannot receive federal family planning funding if any individual member of that organization lobbies the government for reproductive rights? Show me this law.
…who said anything even remotely close to that?
Reading comprehension: It’s a good thing.
Leslie – I wouldn’t necessarily say that Bush hates women and minorities, although some of his policies (like the gag rule) are less than beneficial – I think saying something borderline slanderous and sensational probably would have helped him.
I am pretty sick of the “culture of life” thing – nice rhetoric but it’s meaningless and often contradictory. I read an editorial last year by a self-described pro-life Catholic, who said he didn’t consider Bush pro-life because he made jokes about executing people and that going to war made him feel good. Capital punishment and war are serious enough matters as it is and I find it appalling that he, as a head of state, would treat those manners with anything less than complete sobriety
It’s kind of backfiring now. IIRC, in the VA gov. election, the R candidate hit a snag because of the Supreme Court nomination. People thought that Roe v. Wade might get overturned and that the abortion issue would come before they states, they asked him if he would criminalize abortion, so he had to pick his “culture of life” or that yes, he would criminalize abortion (which, when you put it that way, is relatively unpopular). William Saletan wrote an interesting piece about how Bush has seldom given a concrete answer on abortion – he says he’s for a culture of life and for relatively popular restrictions like on partial birth abortion and parental notification, but again, he never makes any concrete statements.
Ha. There’s another Kate. Maybe I should change my screen name ;)
Jill – I assume that since the Hyde Amendment (which bans federal funding for abortions) has been in place for so long, that it must have gone before the supreme court. Also, it’s worth noting that the Mexico City Policy also restricts facilities that would perform privately funded abortions and that would even discuss abortion with the woman.
Of course, the real issue isn’t constitutional, it is one of public health – trying to have the greatest impact on the health of women and children in the developing world
In that case, you want to get decisions out of the hands of a body whose ideological direction changes every two years, and into the hands of private entities who can establish a fixed policy and advocate for it.
Kate-
“less than beneficial” is a masterpiece of understatement.
As Jill said above
Now I think you could pretty safely bet that most of those adverse events happened to non-white women. I won’t bother with Andrew’s comment other than to say I actually wasn’t talking about Iraq here and in the context of this discussion Afganistan is perhaps more relevant.
The Missouri law prohibits the use of state funding and property to perform abortions. Yes, I realize it’s not as draconian as the Mexico City Policy. I never said it was identical, I said it was similar.
What part of the Constitution allows the government to do that?
Andrew-
Commerce clause?
“To regulate commerce with foreign nations”
- Article 1, Section 8
Let’s reverse this a bit. Imagine if the international agencies were willing to perform abortions but issued statements and told all women who came in that all women should accept beatings from their husbands for having the procedure. Would it be unconstitutional to deny them funds even though it is their right to speak?
The US constitution ends at the US borders except for US government-owned lands abroad (embassies, military bases, etc). Saudis own many US companies and employ many Amercans. Could they enforce their constitution on Americans just because they pay them money?
That having been said, the whole thing is a stupid pandering to the religious nuts. There is however a difference between illegal/unconstitional and stupid policy.
This post seriously makes me want to cry… those poor women. I can’t imagine how badly you want to not be pregnant in order to consider some of the horrible ways these women try to end their pregnancies. It makes me sick… if you don’t want abortions to occurr (and I’ll be honest, I really don’t want to see anyone have one, but I don’t want to see this become the reality in this country either) then you MUST provide them ways to prevent it. In my mind, anything that prevents 22 million abortions, 23 million unplanned births and 1.4 million infant deaths is a good thing. A very good thing. Anyone who is truly pro-life should support increased access to contraception and family planning. Prevention is the best thing we can do for these women.
I have to admit to being fairly naive… I guess I didn’t realize just how bad it is in some of these other nations. And I really didn’t fully understand the mexico city policy. Thank you for the eye opener, Jill.
Yes, I am well aware of the fact that Congress has the power to regulate commerce between states and foreign nations. But the Commerce Clause doesn’t give Congress unlimited power – such as the power to provide free contraceptives to poor women. There were two important cases during the last 10 years in which SCOTUS set limits to Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. Perhaps you should learn something about them before you use the Commerce Clause to defend proposed laws that have no constitutional basis.
In United States v. Lopez, Alfonso Lopez carried a gun into his high school in Texas, was caught with it, and indicted under the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it illegal to carry guns in or around schools. He sought to dismiss the charges because the law exceeded Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce and the case made its way to SCOTUS. The federal government argued that guns in schools can lead to violence, which harms the economy, so Congress had the power to make carrying a gun in a school a federal offense. SCOTUS overturned the law, ruling 5-4 that there was no evidence that possessing a gun in school harmed interstate commerce and that Congress can’t regulate something that doesn’t have substantial impact on the economy.
Five years later, in US v. Morrison, Antonio Morrison was sued in federal court under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 by Christy Brzonkala, who alleged he raped her when they were students at Virginia Tech. VAWA had a provision that allowed victims of “gender-motivated violence” (ie. rape) to sue their alleged attackers in federal court. The case eventually reached SCOTUS, where the Department of Justice argued that Congress had the authority to enact this law because rape affects the economy (due to medical costs, leave from work, etc.), so it was allowed under the Commerce Clause. SCOTUS didn’t buy that argument and voted 5-4 that this provision of VAWA was unconstitutional. Majority opinion writer Justice Rehnquist noted that “gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense, economic activity.”
Here’s more information on those cases:
US v. Lopez
US v. Morrison
So as you can see, the Commerce Clause is not a blank check for Congress to do whatever the hell it wants. Laws passed under the Commerce Clause have to either regulate interstate commerce or something that substantially affects it.
“Perhaps you should learn something about them before you use the Commerce Clause to defend proposed laws that have no constitutional basis”
What did I do to deserve that kind of response? That’s why I put a question mark in the first place.
Umm, Andrew, it would appear that you’re looking at the wrong part of the commerce clause. The two cases to which you refer had to do with interstate commerce, whereas appropriations for foreign aid would clearly fall under the portion of the commerce clause that kate cited: “To regulate commerce with foreign nations…” not interstate commerce.
Also, the case law behind the current interpretation of what can be regulated under the interestate commerce clause is much more complicated than the two cases cited, but that’s another post.
Yeah, I know US v. Lopez and US v. Morrison involved regulating interstate commerce. I brought them up because someone said that the federal government should provide contraceptives to poor women to prevent unplanned pregnancies. I asked how this would be constitutional and someone suggested the Commerce Clause, so I was simply pointing out that the power to regulate interstate commerce doesn’t allow Congress do do whatever the hell it wants.
And how would foreign aid to family planning organizations qualify as “commerce with foreign nations”?
Just wanted to share something kind of cool, as it pertains to global choice issues.
There are folks out there working to help educate women and physicians around the world — in the case I know the most about, the Arab world — about sexual health, reproductive options and choice.
The organization that recently came to my attention is called Ibis Reproductive Health, and they have recently published a guide to medication abortion (e.g., mifepristone and methotrexate) in English and Arabic. (PDFs on the web site)
No federal dollars, obviously. But it’s worth mentioning that there are American organizations still fighting the good fight.
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