Obama lifts 'gag rule' on family planning

Reproductive rights advocates hail the reversal of the Global Gag Rule by American President Barack Obama. The “gag rule,” imposed by former President George W. Bush eight years ago, prohibited family planning programs in nations that receive US aid for using non-US monies for abortion counseling, advocacy, and referrals.

Obama said the restrictions “undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.”

The Feminist Majority Foundation has issued a statement saying that Obama’s executive order “will have a monumental impact by saving the life, health, and suffering of literally millions of women worldwide yearly.” Due in part to “restricted access to reproductive health caused by the Global Gag Rule, more than 70,000 women annually die from unsafe abortions worldwide and the incidence of HIV/AIDS is skyrocketing,” writes Feminist Majority Foundation president Eleanor Smeal.

Smeal speaks for the millions of women — and men — welcoming a new era of change under Obama. “This is our moment. We believe many positive changes for women are on the immediate horizon.”

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Local non-government organizations rejoice over the Obama action, coming as it did just days after his inauguration. Among these is the Institute for Social Studies and Action (ISSA), whose chief executive officer Dr. Florence Macagba Tadiar, describes the lifting of the “gag rule” as “giving hope for change for all the individuals and couples in the world who had been deprived of their reproductive rights and opportunities to reach their highest potential because of lack of information, services, and the means to manage their fertility. Finally, the long dark night of the past eight years that were ruled by fundamentalist, ultra conservative, gender insensitive, and prejudiced forces of the Bush administration has finally come to an end.”

The “gag rule,” says Tadiar, had even “gone to the absurd limit of preventing clinics funded by US federal money, to even talk about medical options, i.e. — to inform their clients of their choices of family planning methods. Thus, individuals and couples who sought help to plan their family have been discriminated against, coerced into getting pregnant, forced to undergo unsafe abortion practices, and often losing their health or life in their desperation.”

At last, developing countries like the Philippines, can again be given support to implement their commitments they made at the International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, particularly on reproductive rights. The signatories, including the US and the Philippines, recognize the “basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health”. This “includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence,” says Tadiar.

 Tadiar points to Chap.7:20 of the 1994 ICPD document which states, “Governments should make it easier for couples and individuals to take responsibility for their own reproductive health by removing unnecessary legal, medical, clinical and regulatory barriers to information and access to family planning services and methods.”

The Philippine Constitution, Tadiar continues, carries the following State obligations: Defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; equally protect the life of the mother and the unborn, and adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development which shall endeavor to make essential goods, health and other social services available to all the people at affordable cost.”

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Attorney Clara Rita A. Padila, executive director of EnGender Rights, said that the global gag rule prohibited organizations that received USAID funding from using their own funds to advocate for safe and legal abortion and provide for life-saving safe abortion services. She said Obama’s reversal of the gag rule “works towards the advancement of free speech and puts a strong message forward that access to safe and legal abortion is a human right.”

“As Obama mentioned in his statement, “This will also work to promote safe motherhood, reduce maternal and infant mortality rates and increase educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.”               

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With Obama’s action, hopefully people opposed to the passage of the Reproductive Health and Population bill that is pending in Congress will rethink their position.

 The main oppositors to the bill, the Church, does not welcome Obama’s executive action. Obama’s action, says Attorney Padilla, will spell “the difference between life and death for almost half a million Filipino women every year who are driven to induced abortion, with 79,000 admitted to hospitals for complications from unsafe abortion and 800 women who die.”

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