I speak of this story quite often, as it was one of my great moments in high school when Lee Terry came to visit. I’d had a previous discourse with Nancy Thompson, one of the most fantastic and truly caring politicians I had ever known, to whom I had addressed several questions. A few of them she said I could do best with addressing to my congressman. Lo and behold, said congressman came to Papillion LaVista High School, wherein he held an open forum for any questions. I got no real answer to the questions I did ask (such as what he thought of the intentionally vague Surgeon’s General warnings on cigarette packets), and finally got the answer to one particular question after the speech session, where I approached him. I asked him if he approved of the global gag rule, to which the congressman who had voted in the affirmative on it replied, “What’s that?” After I was kind enough to explain it to him, he replied no, he did not support his tax dollars being used to fund these organizations giving out abortions, since he did not believe in them.
One problem, mister congressman: It doesn’t use YOUR tax dollars. To get a perspective, let’s look at the Center for Reproductive Rights‘ definition of the Global Gag Rule:

“On January 22, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush re-imposed restrictions known as the “Global Gag Rule” (or the “Mexico City Policy”). This policy restricts foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive U.S. family planning funds from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services, lobby their own governments for abortion law reform, or even provide accurate medical counseling or referrals regarding abortion. On April 5, 2005, the Senate passed an amendment that would repeal the Global Gag Rule on international family planning assistance by a vote of 52-46.”

However, the global gag rule was never repealed:

• June 16, 2005: House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations passes the FY’06 spending bill. The bill includes $432 million in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) population assistance program. The bill contains no language repealing the global gag rule.

• June 21, 2005: House Appropriations Committee passes the FYʹ06 spending bill, which includes $432 million in funding for the USAID population assistance program. The bill contains no language repealing the global gag rule.(source)

The stance on this is a supposedly “pro-life” stance, which is geared toward prevention of the destruction of life through abortion. It was instituted by the Reagan administration in 1984. It was rescinded by the Clinton administration January 2nd of 1993. Bush re-instated it on his very first day in office, where it has remained in place ever since, with the comment “It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad. It is therefore my belief that the Mexico City Policy should be restored.” So what good is the policy doing?

According to WHO (World Health Organization), 68,000 women die from unsafe abortions every year. 40% of unsafe abortions are performed on women 15-24, and accounts for 13% of all pregnancy-related deaths (source). 95% of these deaths are in developing countries, like the ones restricted by the global gag rule. Any of these statistics can be looked up on WHO’s web page or at Safe Motherhood, a global organization devoted to reducing the number of deaths in pregnancy and childbirth. They also speak of the methods women who are unable to obtain a safe abortion use, including poisons, insertion of a stick into the uterus, overdose of over-the-counter drugs, douching with bleach, and attempting to use physical abuse to remove the child. And contrary to popular belief, these women are not simply irresponsible teens who decided to get knocked up and now have to face the consequences. According to WHO, most of these women are in fact married women who already have several children. Rape, sexual coercion, and contraceptive failure are some of the reasons for these abortions, but 350 million couples worldwide do NOT have access to modern, safe, and effective family planning services (source).

So why, with all of this information available, is the United States cutting the funding to family planning organizations, making every one of these negative statistics rise with every safe abortion denied and every institution cut off from necessary funding to provide a safe abortion? It’s one thing to be against abortion, but it’s another to deny someone an abortion the proper medical care they need in order to have one safely. If the woman dies from the unsafe abortion, both the mother and the child are lost, resulting then in the view of a pro-life as two dead. Regardless of stance on abortion, how can one safely proclaim that this policy has saved any lives, when statistics evidence that it has taken so very many?

A friend of mine once made this statement, which I have remembered to this day: “Women are going to have an abortion whether the government allows them to or not. Do we want them to have the best medical care possible then, or do we want them to do it with a rusty coat hanger?” I almost didn’t believe it then that any woman would try to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger. Yet we live in a world where the land of the free and the home of the brave makes this all too true a reality, because our government’s mission is to impose its current set of morals on women who are desperate, lost, and afraid enough to do this. While I can’t speak for everyone, I know that it disgusts and disturbs me, not just as a woman, but as a human being.