Though it didn’t generate significant fanfare, last week was the 20th anniversary of the creation of an indefensible public policy: Reagan’s “global gag rule.” It’s often called the “Mexico City policy” because it was developed at an international family planning conference in Mexico City in August 1984. Naturally, its biggest fan is occupying the Oval Office right now.
Not that he really knows what the policy means. For those who argue that the president really is smarter than his critics believe, consider Bush’s remarks about this issue. A couple of weeks after his inauguration as president, Bush met with a group of Roman Catholic leaders in the White House. Bush was anxious to show his support for issues of direct concern to the church and tried to tout an executive order he had just signed restoring the policy. Here’s literally what he said:
At the meeting, Bush called it “the money from Mexico, you know, that thing, the executive order I signed about Mexico City.”
Bush signed an executive order re-establishing a global gag rule, but just days later, hadn’t a clue what he had put his signature on.
Alas, this policy has nothing to do with “money from Mexico.” It has to do with the federal government blocking information about family planning to those who need it most.
Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) and Planned Parenthood’s Gloria Feldt had a tremendous op-ed in the Boston Globe recently explaining the disaster that Clinton fixed, but Bush embraced.
The “Mexico City” policy prohibits US dollars and contraceptive supplies from going to any international family planning program that provides abortions or counsels women about their reproductive health options. The policy isn’t about money going to pay for abortions. Even those groups that use only private funds for abortion services — where abortion is legal — are barred from assistance. This is money going to family planning programs.
President Clinton rescinded the Mexico City policy in 1993. But President Bush reinstated and expanded it on his first day in office. Now not only are organizations that provide or counsel about abortion services affected; those that dare to take part in a public discussion about legalizing abortion are also affected (hence the name “global gag rule”). Of course, those that call for restricting abortion rights are not affected.
This policy has nothing to do with government-sponsored abortions overseas. Ten years before the gag rule was in place the law strictly prohibited that. This policy is about disqualifying prochoice organizations from receiving US international family planning funding.
Under Bush’s policy, organizations that play a vital role in women’s health are forced to make an impossible choice. If they refuse to be “gagged,” they lose the funding that enables them to help women and families who are cut off from basic health care and family planning. But if they accept funding, they must accept restrictions that jeopardize the health of the women they serve.
It’s a callous, heartless policy that undermines families in need, particularly in poorer countries in the developing world.
As the American Prospect’s Sarah Wildman noted earlier this year, the consequences of Bush’s policy have been disastrous.
* In Kenya, five family-planning clinics have been shut down since 2001, one in an area with the highest rates of HIV in the country, another — which had been serving 300,000 people — in one of the poorest sections of Nairobi. Also, a massive USAID-sponsored integrated health-care project for family planning, children’s health and HIV/AIDS lost crucial partners among NGOs that refused to sign the gag rule.
* In Romania, a country where women have long relied on abortion as a means of contraception, the gag rule prevents abortion providers from working with organizations that receive U.S. funding to support educating women about alternative contraception.
* Supplies of contraceptives are withering in 29 countries. That’s because if an NGO doesn’t sign the gag rule, the organization doesn’t only lose money — it also forfeits the right to receive U.S. donated contraceptives, including condoms. Since Bush reinstated the rule, 16 countries have lost all U.S. supplied contraceptives and 13 have found their supplies severely limited.
* In Peru the numbers of unsafe abortions increased between 2000 and 2002.
* Across the world, health centers have been forced to scale back their general health services. For the most part, health centers in developing nations integrate services, both to husband resources and to make sure that a woman’s contact with a health-care provider — which is infrequent — is as comprehensive as possible. With the gag rule in place, centers that discuss abortion lose funding, regardless of how many vital services they provide.
Not long ago, the United States led the way in helping families around the world learn about their health care and family planning options. It’s tragic that Bush has turned back the clock and stunted our leadership when the world needs it most.