The moment the Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 you could audibly hear the sound of every pro-choice advocate in the country groaning simultaneously. Those committed to fighting for a woman’s right to choose knew right then and there that the next four years were going to be hell.
On that fateful December day two years ago, pro-choice advocates braced themselves for a long and arduous domestic battle. There was no doubt that the 43rd president would go toe-to-toe with Roe vs. Wade.
Bush’s chances looked good, too, since more than a few Supreme Court justices seemed to be in his corner. After all, the right-leaning, five-justice majority had just gift-wrapped the presidency and presented it to him, legal integrity be damned.
As pro-choicers geared up to fight for contraception, clinics and morning-after pills in America, a global battlefield was being mapped out at the White House. Shortly after taking office, Bush announced that one of his first acts as president would be to reinstate the 1984 “Mexico City Policy.” Clinton had reversed this policy in 1993, but in 2001 Bush resurrected it under the title of “The Global Gag Rule.”
Pro-choice advocates soon realized that they would have to fight for the rights of women all over the world. George W. Bush knew that doing away with abortion here in the United States would be challenging, so he set out to strip struggling, less-developed countries of their right to a choice.
President Bush is overtly pro-life. Now, I realize that’s a funny statement since he seems to have no trouble executing people en masse with military strikes, electric chairs and lethal injections. But the clarification is that President Bush believes in protecting life as it develops in the womb. Once the child is actually born, it’s going to have to fend for itself.
Anyway, given Bush’s commitment to protect fetuses, the reinstatement of the “Global Gag Rule” was a surprise to no one. Basically, the GGR states that any foreign, non-governmental organization that gets aid from the United States cannot even so much as whisper the word “abortion.”
It would be one thing if Bush were just stipulating that the foreign organizations were forbidden from using U.S. funds to provide abortion services. But the “Global Gag Rule” says that the world’s organizations receiving U.S. aid cannot even use their own non-U.S. funds to provide abortions.
They are also strictly forbidden from counseling women regarding abortion, lobbying their governments for abortion-law reform, engaging in any public discussion of abortion, distributing materials on abortion or engaging in Internet discussions on the topic.
And completely throwing basic human rights out the window, the groups are also banned from testifying before or giving briefings to the U.S. Congress. Lest these groups raise an objection of some sort, they are also forbidden from attending or speaking publicly at U.N. conferences.
Supporters of the “Global Gag Rule” will argue that if these groups are going to accept U.S. money, they should just shut up and follow U.S. rules. That reasoning is flawed. Abortion is legal and accessible here (for now). We can also discuss it, provide education on it, protest it and even write opinion articles about it.
Furthermore, the organizations accepting U.S. aid are generally struggling just to scrape by and provide extremely basic health care to women. The money is essential to continue their operations. No matter how bitter it is to swallow, the truth is that heavily censored and restricted health care is better than no health care at all.
But Bush fails to see that this isn’t just an ideological issue. It’s also an extremely significant health danger in less-developed countries. According to the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, approximately 80,000 women die annually due to unsafe abortions. It is estimated that at least 20 million abortions are performed every year under unsafe and illegal conditions.
Unsafe abortions are a leading cause of maternal mortality in Nepal, Peru and Columbia, yet the GGR is preventing women’s rights groups there from petitioning their governments for reform.
A few weeks ago, the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy lost its lawsuit against President Bush and his “Global Gag Rule.” The U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the case in mid-September, and so the GGR stands.
Not only does this ethnocentric policy tell other countries what to believe; it also imposes a double standard stating, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
The GGR even prohibits the spread of knowledge and education on abortion. In this case, ignorance is extraordinarily dangerous. With 20 million back-alley abortions happening every year, it is clear that desperate women will turn to whatever option they have.
Due to Bush’s policy, they will be denied safe and legal abortion services or even information on the topic. Tens of thousands of women are dying unthinkably horrific deaths every year at the hands of inept abortion practitioners in unsanitary facilities.
Bush is entitled to his ideological beliefs, of course. But the “Global Gag Rule” isn’t preventing abortions. In fact, it’s actually exacerbating the problem by silencing those who have important information to offer and forcing the practice underground. If Bush were indeed pro-life, he would not engage in foreign policies of censorship that directly cause widespread death and injury.
Kate MacDonald ([email protected]) is a journalism, film and economics student at UW-Milwaukee.
