Good riddance to the gag rule

Mon, 01/26/2009 - 5:31pm

Depending on where you stand, President Barack Obama's Friday decision to lift the Mexico City Policy, better known as the global gag rule, was either wonderful or appalling. For the last seven years, the gag rule stipulated that charities promoting and supporting abortion services could not recieve funding from the U.S. Government. Now, they can. I say: it's about time.

My position is not drawn from either side of the abortion debate. It's drawn from what I saw as a reporter and as a person living in Nigeria. HIV/AIDS is the open secret there -- a growing problem with a whispered name.

To put it politely, the gag rule created a rift -- at times gaping -- between U.S. government-funded projects and those of private NGOs trying to prevent HIV infection. The U.S. government brought the buck -- President Bush's PEPFAR program boasted $39 billion for HIV/AIDS work -- but it also brought rules about how to get the work done. The foundations brought less money and a sometimes different approach. Both sides fought to win the support of the local government for their strategies. From what I saw, that debate could get ugly. Friends working in the field were frustrated and saddened by the result: inertia and politics, instead of posters and condoms.

There was one particular problem that brought it home for me. In 2006, a Nigerian lawmaker announced that 55,000 women die in the country each year from unsafe illegal abortions. The evidence was everywhere -- from women that my colleagues and I met to Nigerian films on exactly that topic.

What was the best way to get that statistic down? Some will say abstinence. But sex is not always a choice. It's in those situations where women seek -- or are forced by their partners to seek -- unsafe abortions. Some counseling and a sterile doctor's office would go a long way.

That's just one example. The real "gag" was that you didn't hear a lot of stories about birth control or HIV prevention in Nigeria. So my few are only the beginning. Maybe now we'll start to hear a few more.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Elizabeth Dickinson | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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End the Gag...but Nothing Else

by theCardinal on Tue, 01/27/2009 - 9:17pm

The gag rule is improperly named. If it was just a matter of providing information I would have no problem. I do believe that a woman does have the right to choose what I don't believe is that I, an American taxpayer should pay for someone's abortion. It matters little to me what you saw...ultimately I believe that one may choose their own way that abortion is in fact murder and using my money to kill innocents is appalling. That you have decided that you know a better way to spend MY tax dollars than me is the height of arrogance. If you feel so bad about what is going on then donate YOUR time and YOUR money to providing abortions but since leftists are notoriously tight with their own money but pretty loose with everyone else's cash.

Gag rule statistics

by FP Joe on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 9:57am

"In 2006, a Nigerian lawmaker announced that 55,000 women die in the country each year from unsafe illegal abortions."

Get real - you must know better than to take a Nigerian politician's rhetoric as scientific fact. Do you honestly believe 55,000 women/year are dying in Nigeria because of unsafe illegal abortions? Sure, the problem might be bad, but surely you can't use this as a basis number to "get this statistic down." It smacks of the same rhetoric that was used to say UN sanctions were killing 1,000,000 babies a year in Saddam's Iraq.

Nigerian politicians, films and colleagues are notoriously bad sources of evidence. There is very likely a real issue here, but playing fast and loose with statistics only hurts the cause in the long run.