Excerpts from an editorial in International Herald Tribune yesterday:
President Barack Obama on Friday began dismantling his predecessor’s broad and damaging assault on women’s reproductive health and freedom. He lifted the odious gag rule that President George W. Bush imposed on international family planning groups and began trying to restore financing to the United Nations Population Fund.
It was a reassuring message that Obama takes seriously his duty to safeguard women’s lives and basic rights, including free speech and the choice of whether to bear a child.
The gag rule was first imposed by President Ronald Reagan. It barred any health care provider receiving American family planning assistance from counseling women on abortion, engaging in political speech on abortion or providing abortions, even with its own money.
President Bill Clinton lifted the gag rule, but Bush reinstated it in toughened form on his first full day in office in 2001. That seriously disrupted the best quality and most accessible family planning services in poor countries. It denied women access to desperately needed contraceptives, help in preventing HIV-AIDS, and maternal care. Obama’s executive order lifting the financing ban will mean fewer deaths from unsafe illegal abortions.
