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Help us create change that lasts, delivering quality health care in the world’s poorest communities.
On October 31, 2007, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the Mexico City Policy, or Global Gag Rule. Under this policy, all foreign organizations that want to receive U.S. family planning assistance must pledge that they will not use their own funds to provide abortion, counsel or refer for abortion, or lobby for the legalization of abortion in their country.
At the hearing, several members of Congress brought domestic abortion politics into the debate, as they argued in favor of keeping the policy and even expanding such a policy to other areas, such at HIV and AIDS funding. But Congress also heard compelling testimony from witnesses who have first-hand experience with the negative ramifications of the policy. Dr. Joana Nerquaye-Tetteh, former Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), was among the witnesses. PPAG had at one time been supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development through an EngenderHealth project. Dr. Nerquaye-Tetteh described the impact of the Global Gag Rule in Ghana, where there has been a significant drop in the provision of family planning and reproductive health services and a rise in unsafe abortion.
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“We will never know the real cost of this harmful policy.... We can never know the total number of lives that have been irreversibly altered: a sexually transmitted infection or maybe even HIV that could have been prevented, a poor rural mother that could have received quality prenatal care to help her survive a pregnancy and deliver a healthy baby, a woman that could have avoided an unwanted pregnancy and therefore not sought an unsafe abortion and had to deal with its related complications.” |
The Global Gag Rule has been challenged by Congress during the appropriations process for fiscal year 2008, with the House calling for an exemption to the policy that allows for supplying contraceptives, and the Senate calling for a repeal of the policy altogether. Congress will most likely not submit the final appropriations bill to the President until December, and it remains to be seen whether any proposed changes to the Global Gag Rule will make it into the final bill. We will continue to advocate and support efforts for its repeal.
A webcast of the hearing is available (requires RealPlayer multimedia software).