KRISTEN HALL | staff writer
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illustration by Kristen Hall
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Over the last decade, every time a new administration has entered the White House, the controversial Mexico City Policy, also known as the abortion “gag” rule has either been reinstated or revoked.
On the day after the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, newly sworn-in President Barack Obama repealed the policy, sending pro-life conservatives reeling.
Amy Sullivan writes in an online article for Time magazine on Jan. 23, 2009, “The global gag rule bars foreign governments and multilateral organizations from receiving U.S. family planning funds if they provide abortion services or engage in any lobbying on abortion issues. It prevents organizations such as women’s health clinics and AIDS awareness groups from discussing abortion in any form.”
In essence, women’s aid groups in third world countries would lose all of their funding if they refused to change their policies.
This blatant violation of free speech has been coined, “the gag rule” because it prevents abortion from being discussed or referred at all.
What supporters of the policy fail to realize is that these organizations do more than just provide abortions and abortion referrals. They also help women who have been the victims of rape and incest in addition to providing AIDS awareness programs and free contraceptives to millions of people.
According to Sullivan, when Bush reinstated the policy in 2001, some groups, including Planned Parenthood organizations in Romania and Colombia, altered their activities in order to qualify and continued to receive funding. At least 16 developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East were affected.
Thankfully, because of the actions of our new president these organizations are now able to receive funding again and provide much needed services which have been unattainable for years.
This action has caused right wing, anti-abortion lobbyists to go up in arms.
Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, responded to Obama’s actions in a press release; “Here we have a black president taking money from the taxpayers in a time of economic crisis and giving it to organizations—many of which are anti-Catholic—so they can spend it on killing non-white babies in Third World nations. And Obama is known as a progressive.”
This is just the kind of mindset that has allowed this flawed policy to continue coming back from administration to administration.
To see this issue clearly, I think that the pro-choice versus pro-life argument needs to be put on hold and the politicians need to look at the bigger picture. Donahue and other conservatives try to appeal to the emotional argument by saying “Well, it’s killing babies.”
With no further development or supportive depth, that argument is very one-sided and narrow minded.
Take for instance a young girl in Africa who becomes pregnant because she did not have access to contraceptives or sex education. With circumstances that limit her ability to feed herself and her family, under the abortion gag she will have no other option except to continue the pregnancy.
Now we have a mother who lacks access to good medical care, and this lack of provision could ultimately lead to her death if there are complications in childbirth.
Once the baby is born she will have to find some way to feed and care for it.
Is it better from a moral standpoint to let this child and mother die from starvation and disease after it is born rather than before it has developed in the womb?
As Christians I believe we cannot afford to take issues like abortion at face value.
When Bush reinstated the rule New York House Democrat Carolyn Maloney told Time magazine, “Every day at least 1,600 women and girls die from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Bush’s decision to impose a gag rule is a pure legislative ambush, and the victims of this ambush are the world’s poorest women and girls.”
Whether democratic or republican, all new presidents since 1981 have acted upon this issue in accordance with the wishes of their respective parties and supporters.
I think this issue is too important to be simply seen as another part of a liberal or conservative agenda.
With over 42 million people currently living with AIDS it doesn’t make any sense to cut off funding to reproductive health clinics in other countries.
Rather than focusing on the minor facet of this problem, abortion, we need to cross party lines to combat this epidemic as a united front.
We can never expect change to happen in impoverished countries when we are more concerned about a partisan agenda than women’s reproductive health and safety.
If we were to focus our efforts more on preventing unplanned pregnancies in the first place, abortion would never even be an issue in the political arena.
