Mexico City Comes to Missouri - What Else is On the Way?
The Mexico City Policy (Global Gag Rule): Under the policy, no U.S. family planning assistance can be provided to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to: perform abortions in cases other than a threat to the life of the woman, rape, or incest; provide counseling and referral for abortion; or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country. Non-compliance will result in loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Missouri, April 25: No public money can be used to fund abortions in Missouri. But a bill approved last week by the Missouri Senate would deny state aid to hospitals, clinics or counselors who so much as mention the word “abortion.”
Since Reagan enacted the Global Gag Rule in 1984, it’s been expanded by Dear Leader : (emph mine)
On Friday, August 29, (2003) the Bush administration released an executive memorandum extending the reach of the global gag rule to family planning programs that are funded through the State Department. This move extends the gag on funds for family planning, which previously had affected only voluntary population funds provided through USAID. This drastic expansion means that more of the world’s most vulnerable women, including refugees, will be denied basic health care services.
How’s that working out? At this site, you can see the ramifications of the policy country by country. Let’s look at Kenya.
The story of the Global Gag Rule in Kenya is one of unintended consequences. It has dealt a double blow to the health of Kenyan women: it has crippled USAID’s integrated health project and starved the leading family planning NGOs of much-needed funding and technical support. The Global Gag Rule has closed clinics, curtailed family planning and maternal and child health care services, and weakened the collective Kenyan NGO response to HIV/AIDS. “NGO and private sector service delivery points are essential elements of overall provision,” asserted a major European donor in laying out a comprehensive strategy for addressing HIV/AIDS. The Global Gag Rule, however, is forcing USAID to embark on an altogether different approach, one that impairs the effectiveness of U.S. development aid.
If the goal of the Global Gag Rule is to ensure separation of abortion-related activities from family planning – in a country where abortion is illegal and causes several thousand injuries and deaths each year – it has sorely missed its mark. The Global Gag Rule has eroded women’s access to contraception and reproductive health care. This can only lead to more, not fewer, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths.
We have Catholic hospitals in Colorado giving rape victims ovulation tests to determine if they will be allowed access to emergency contraception. We have the Missouri Gag Rule waiting for the governor’s signature - read other provisions of the bill to see how else access to reproductive healthcare will be restricted. How long do you figure it will be before hospitals, clinics or counselors aren’t allowed to mention emergency contraception to rape victims or any woman? How long until hospitals, clinics or counselors are frobidden from mentioning any form of birth control?
How long until you or someone you love may need it?
May 4th, 2005 at 8:40 am
There should be some sort of “statement of intent” here…
“I, {fill in your name here}, being a certified member of the Missouri Legislature, believe that women on Medicaid should die if they are faced with a life-threatening pregnancy, and that poor women who get raped should carry to term whether they want to or not.”
That should do it.
May 4th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Thanks for calling our attention to this.
May 4th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
I don’t think the religious right will be happy until women everywhere are all barefoot and pregnant again. They have more in common with the Taliban and the Saudis than most Americans.
Notice in Kuwait they denied women the right to vote again. Sure glad we liberated that country!
May 5th, 2005 at 7:42 am
Hi Jenny
I missed that about Kuwait. That’s a real shame. And they just got away with it - lets you know what women are worth worldwide.
May 5th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Brazil has turned down some AIDS money because the US won’t allow them to use it to treat prostitutes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4513805.stm
I’m not a lawyer but I don’t know how this can be even legal. It’s like condemning them to suffering and death without a trial, without any formal finding, within, say, the jurisdiction of Brazil’s own government, as to why they should be deprived of their already existing (aqnd therefore not needing to be created) civil rights.
How does this fit with the culture of life again? When we have to go borrow money or troops from Brazil, can we expect them to say “Only if you kill off your sick prostitutes?”