North Star Writers Group

Last week the House voted to challenge President Bush’s foreign policy regarding global women’s health by reversing a ban that blocks nongovernmental organizations abroad from receiving U.S. dollars if they perform or disseminate information about abortions. The narrow vote, although surely headed for the growing stack of Bush vetoes accumulated since Democrats took over the House, brings the issue of women’s health around the world back into the public conscience.

The ban was introduced by Ronald Reagan, reversed by Bill Clinton, then reinstated by Bush on his first day in office. It is sometimes referred to by women’s health advocates as the Global Gag Rule because, under the ban, organizations are unable to receive family planning funding if they advocate or advertise abortion services, even in cases of informal debate, and even if abortion is legal in their country.

The ban is not only patriarchal and detrimental to public health but also makes little sense in the scheme of what Bush and other conservative lawmakers are trying to accomplish in the first place. Primarily, U.S. donations have been in the form of contraceptive aid, either by providing contraceptives themselves or funds used to advocate and distribute them. But, according to Reagan’s ban, any group that advocates abortion along with contraceptives cannot receive aid of any kind. So, essentially, in order to reduce the number of abortions being performed, the U.S. government restricts public access to contraceptives.

According to House Republicans in opposition to the reversal set forth this week, offering contraceptive aid to groups that perform or advocate abortion services would free up funding that would allow for more abortions to be performed. In many cases, however, it is contraceptive funding that is cut to allow for essential reproductive health programs that save women’s lives in areas where public health systems are failing or nonexistent. Contraceptives are the single most viable weapon against unwanted pregnancy and abortion, yet they are precisely what conservative lawmakers are taking away, and with dire consequences that go beyond unplanned pregnancies and abortion.

In case after heartbreaking case – in Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya and Ghana – a loss of U.S. funding forced women’s clinics and centers that educate the public about HIV/AIDS to close their doors. The health of both sexes around the globe is in jeopardy because of an ideological agenda that places the value of potential human life over that of existing human life.

In the case of the Global Gag Rule and other policies regarding reproductive health worldwide, politics are trumping reason time and time again. Common sense dictates that if you take away contraceptive aid, fewer people will have access to them, and more pregnancies and abortions will result, even where abortion is illegal. It is not accurate to assume that without contraceptives, sexual activity will cease. Abstinence education fails here in the United States, yet lawmakers expect it to be taught in Third World countries as the solution to unwanted pregnancies and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Although I support the legality of abortion in the United States, it seems hypocritical that we as a nation allow them to be performed, yet dictate to other countries whether or not they shall receive funding based on their abortion stance. It is as if lawmakers in the United States realize that Roe v. Wade is here to stay, and thus must extend their patriarchal reach to countries where democracy is fragile at best. If anything, access to safe abortion should be more important in Third World countries, where a new baby can mean having to stretch already scarce quantities of foods even further, sometimes resulting in undernourishment and death of existing family members.

In many of these countries, however, abortion is illegal, and is likely to stay that way because organizations there can’t even speak out about abortion in fear of losing essential funding from the United States.

Democrats deserve credit for bringing this issue to the political forefront, even if the measure they put forward never makes it past the president. All too often, women’s reproductive health is a backburner issue when it comes to foreign policy, especially when ideological issues are involved. It’s time for change, and the world can’t afford to wait until 2008 for that shift to begin.

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This is Column # JV010. Request permission to publish here.