House Committee Votes to Gag Overseas Health Groups on Abortion, Threatening Women’s Lives

(PRESS RELEASE) A vote by the House
Foreign Affairs Committee to reimpose the Global Gag Rule threatens women’s
health and lives and undermines basic American values, say advocates at
the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global advocacy organization that promotes women’s
reproductive rights around the world. At around 11:45 p.m. on July 20th,
Committee members rejected an amendment sponsored by Howard Berman (D-CA) to
eliminate Section 412 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which
reimposes the Mexico City Policy, better known as the Global Gag Rule, a policy
prohibiting foreign community and health organizations that receive U.S.
funding from providing safe, legal abortions, or counseling or referring women
about the full range of their reproductive health options – even if the groups
spend their own money that is kept separate from U.S. assistance dollars.

“The Global Gag Rule is an
ideologically driven policy that ultimately harms women overseas by denying them
access to safe, legal abortion services – even when their health is
endangered,” said Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for
Reproductive Rights.  “Already, a
staggering proportion of abortions in low-income countries in Africa and Latin
America are performed under unsafe conditions, and the Global Gag Rule willonly
worsen the impact in terms of women’s lives lost and ruined as these practices
spread.”

The Global Gag Rule, a policy
championed by anti-choice administrations since President Ronald Reagan, forces
women who are denied information about safe abortion to turn to unsafe and
unsanitary back-alley providers or dangerous traditional methods and medicines
to end their unwanted pregnancies. Every year, 21,000,000 unsafe abortions are
carried out worldwide, nearly all in low-income countries.

“Under the Global Gag Rule,
foreign healthcare professionals must choose between denying their patientsfull
and accurate information, or violating U.S. law and risking the loss oftheir
funding, which is desperately needed in resource-strapped countries,” said Aram
Schvey, Policy Counsel for Foreign Policy and Human Rights at the Center for
Reproductive Rights. “This policy would be patently unconstitutional if applied
to U.S.-based groups. It is un-democratic and un-American for Congress to decide
that foreign community and health groups are not worthy of the same free-speech
rights as Americans.”

By forcing foreign community groups
to withhold information from their clients, the Global Gag Rule violates the
right to free speech, prohibiting foreign community groups from conducting
public-education campaigns on safe abortion, or peacefully petitioning their
own governments to ensure access to safe abortion.