The Global Gag Rule -- exploring further
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Contact the 2008 Presidential Candidates
Ask them: "If elected, will you eliminate the Global Gag Rule and restore funding for UNFPA?"
The last eight years have been marked by unfortunate policies, damaging to the provision of sexual and reproductive health services around the world, such as the Global Gag Rule. The 2008 elections mark a significant opportunity to take a stand for all women, men and young people by demanding that our leaders provide funding for evidence-based sexual and reproductive health services and comprehensive sex education. Take action now to ensure that our next President will bring these atrocities to a halt.
- "Ethiopia: Women struggle, but strings bind U.S. help." Read further -->> in a provocative series in the Des Moines Register.
- Voice from Kenya: "If the goal of the Global Gag Rule is to ensure separation of abortion-related activities from family planning – in a country where abortion is illegal and causes several thousand injuries and deaths each year – it has sorely missed its mark." Download this excellent pdf file which details what wrong with the Global Gag Rule with a focus on its impact in Kenya.
- "Tuesday (March 7, 2005) is International Women's Day, a worldwide celebration of women's fight for equality and human rights. In light of this commemoration, it is especially disappointing that the Bush administration is working so hard to restrict women's rights." ->> Read more.
- "The 'gag rule's' restrictions, which would be unconstitutional if applied in the United States, jeopardize the health of women and their families..." according to a special EngenderHealth report. ->> Read more.
- "Two weeks ago a 22 or 23-year-old medical student died of an unsafe abortion. This made the news because the person trying to provide that abortion tried to burn the woman’s body. We need to look at why did she have to die, to look at the circumstances that surround the event. It boils down to people don’t want to talk about it." ->> Read more in Breaking the Silence -- The Global Gag Rule’s Impact on Unsafe Abortion, prepared by The Center for Reproductive Rights.
- The GLOBAL GAG RULE has closed clinics, curtailed family planning and maternal and child health care services, and weakened the collective Kenyan NGO response to HIV/AIDS..." proclaims the study, spearheaded by Population Action International in collaboration with EngenderHealth, Ipas, Pathfinder International and PPFA. Don't miss: Access Denied with its country-by-country detailing of the shameful impact. This report is frequently updated.
- View gripping video produced in conjunction with written reports.
- "The Bush Administration’s gag rule is contributing to the global crisis of unsafe abortion. It is preventing local reproductive health groups from responding to the daily tragedy of women who are needlessly dying from unsafe abortions..." ->> Read more in Breaking the Silence: The Global Gag Rule’s Impact on Unsafe Abortion published by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Or download report in pdf format.
- "Last May, Stephen Mumo Muia, a night watchman, saw three men in a dark blue pickup truck dump something into the Ngong River, a polluted waterway on the outskirts of Nairobi. Mr. Muia said he tried to chase the men, but they slipped into the night.
"In their wake, he found black plastic bags stuffed with 15 fetuses, one full-term...Family planning activists in Kenya, the U.S., Canada and Britain believe that Kenya's increase in illegal abortions is an indirect and unintended consequence of Mr. Bush's 'global gag rule,' which denies U.S. aid to international family-planning programs that counsel abortion or advocate for changes in abortion laws..." ->> Read more in a two part series on the Global Gag Rule appearing October 23 & 24 in the Ottawa Citizen (Canada).