My SI friend, the born again Christian, would defend Bush's gag rule, for example. I consider that my "working definition" fits her, therefore, though incompletely, quiet as is her piety.
W's Abortion 'Gag
Rule'
By Marta Gurvich
April 1, 2001
George W. Bush's global anti-abortion
policy has spread confusion and alarm
among international family-planning
organizations that fear his "gag rule"
could leave women, especially in
Catholic Third World countries, without
birth-control assistance and with higher
death rates from botched abortions.
Criticism has poured in from international
family-planning organizations that have battled
the spread of AIDS, the abuse of women and the
crushing burden of poverty in the Third World.
But Bush has made clear he is determined to
press ahead with a policy favored by his
conservative, anti-abortion constituency in the
United States.
To circumvent opposition in the U.S. Congress,
Bush has decided to issue a presidential
memorandum to implement the "global gag rule"
barring federal aid going to international groups
that use their own money to support abortion
rights, according to press reports. The
memorandum will give greater weight to a policy
that Bush first announced on Jan. 22, two days
after his inauguration.
"Under the gag rule, recipients of U.S.
family-planning funds must give up the ability to
provide legal health services and their basic
human right to take part in important policy
debates in their own countries -- in short the very
integrity of their programs," complained Ingar
Brueggemann, director of the International
Planned Parenthood Federation. "Either choice
hurts the poorest in the world."
Brueggemann said the IPPF opposes abortion as
a method of family planning and seeks to reduce
the number of abortions by making
contraceptives available around the world. Still,
its criticism of Bush's policy could cost it U.S.
assistance that amounts to about 8 percent of its
budget.
Though a relatively small amount of IPPF's
budget, the loss of U.S. government money
would curtail some of the group's programs that
have nothing to do with abortion. For instance,
IPPF supports Bemfam, a Brazilian
family-planning organization that is dedicated to
helping the people of Brazil control family size in
a country where 60 percent of the people live in
poverty.
In Brazil, a Catholic country, abortion already is
tightly restricted. Those laws have contributed to
women turning to illegal abortions to end
unwanted pregnancies, dangerous procedures
that have made botched abortions a major cause
of women's deaths in Brazil, according to the
Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Bush's restoration of the "gag rule" is viewed as
likely to increase the numbers of women dying
from unsafe abortions in Brazil and elsewhere,
according to some family-planning specialists.
Besides the danger of death from botched
abortions, women in Brazil and some other Latin
American nations face at least one year in prison
if they undergo a clandestine abortion and are
arrested. The risks are heavier again for poor
women who can't afford to pay for safe abortions
and can face arrest if they seek emergency care
in a public hospital.
Reversals
Cutting the availability of the family planning
services also might prove counterproductive to
the goal of reducing the number of abortions.
Susane Tew of the Guttmacher Institute said
recent studies have shown that the better
abortion and contraceptive services available in a
country, the fewer abortions that country
registers.
Though Bush's policy could curtail programs at
some better-funded organizations, such as the
IPPF, those group could survive a cutoff of U.S.
aid. Other family-planning organizations are
much more dependent on U.S. support and could
be forced to close down.
The Center for Development and Population
Activities, for instance, is concerned that it could
lose 75 percent of its funding if it is judged in
violation of Bush's rule. The center is nervous
because it has urged the release of Min-Min, a
woman in Nepal who was jailed after she was
forced to have an abortion to end a pregnancy
resulting from a rape when she was 13 years old.
Other supporters of family planning believe that
Bush's policy could roll back broader progress
that women have achieved in gaining power over
their lives.
These critics note that even the Vatican -- a
powerful male bastion that has led the fight
against abortion rights -- has shown some
interest in finding common ground with other
religions. The Vatican hasn't compromised much
but has begun to recognize that a problem with
unwanted pregnancies exists and that there is a
need for family planning.
In 1994, the International Conference on
Population and Development in Cairo brought
together Catholics, Muslims, Jews and
Protestants with the goal of putting global
population policies within the broader context of
social development and improving the status of
women.
The Vatican signed the conference document
that accepted four points about abortion: that
abortion should not be used as a method of
family planning; that the numbers of abortions
should be reduced by expanding access to
family-planning services; abortions should be
safe where legal; and that the consequences of
illegal, unsafe abortions should be addressed.
That position was more in line with the
international family-planning policies adopted by
President Clinton who lifted the "global gag rule"
that was first imposed in the 1980s by President
Reagan at a population-control conference in
Mexico City. The "gag rule" was reaffirmed by
President George H.W. Bush and now is being
restored by George W. Bush.
European organizations are upset and
threatening to pursue their own course
Third World Consequences
Meanwhile, in the Third World, family-planning
advocates see what one called "grave
consequences" from Bush's strategy, especially
in Catholic Latin America.
"The gag rule is neither going to affect Europe nor
the United States nor many Asian developed
countries where abortion is legal and safe," said
Jacqueline Pitanguy, president of a
family-planning institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
"Bush's decision is going to affect us, the Latin
American countries, where abortion is illegal,
clandestine and deadly. It will negatively affect us
in two ways: in a cultural perspective and in a
practical way.
"The cultural consequence is that it will restore
an immense power to the conservatives, to the
rightist lobbies, that have been fighting against
not only abortion but many sexually oriented
programs."
Pitanguy said Bush's policies will give Latin
America's right wing "lobbying and financial
power to push backwards all the advances in
terms of women's legal rights, in terms of how
women are seen by the judicial and social
institutions. … Secondly, it will deprive families of
health services and family-planning programs."
While popular with social conservatives in the
United States and in the Third World, Bush's
strategy seems to have taken little account of the
complex relationships that exist between the
abortion/family-planning debate and the larger
socio-economic conditions in poor countries.
In those countries, the poor find themselves the
most likely victims of the anti-abortion policies, in
part because poor women are the most common
fatalities from unsafe abortions. They're also the
most likely to be imprisoned if caught.
On a larger scale, the loss of family-planning
assistance will mean more of the poor trapped in
cycles of poverty. That development, too, seems
certain to strengthen the hand of the old-line
political forces throughout the Third World.
Marta Gurvich is an Argentine journalist who has
written about political and social issues in Latin
America for this publication for the past four
years. One of her articles examined the "dirty
war" in Argentina. Another looked at the
economic dilemma in Brazil.
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