– In a direct challenge to President George Bush’s first act in office, today the House International Relations Committee voted to include language that would repeal the Bush gag on free speech as an amendment to H.R. 1646, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) offered as an amendment the Global Democracy Promotion Act, a bipartisan and bicameral effort intended to ensure that free speech rights and democratic law-making for women’s health around the world is not censored by the United States government.
"Today’s committee vote is an important first step to righting a grave wrong perpetrated on the women of the world by President Bush in his attempts to pander to anti-choice extremists," stated Rosemary Dempsey, Director of the Washington, DC office of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "To prevent advocates for women’s health from discussing all options with their patients or clients, and from agitating for legal change in their own countries, is unconscionable."
The Global Democracy Promotion Act would ensure that foreign NGOs not be denied US funding on the basis of medical services, including counseling or referrals, which the groups provide, or on the basis of legal lobbying activities performed with their own money. Today’s success in committee ensures that the amendment will be debated on the House floor where it has a good chance of passage. The Senate has repeatedly rejected gag rule language, and passed language against such restrictions in the past.
Under the global gag rule, imposed by President Bush on his first full day in office, foreign organizations that receive U.S. family planning funds cannot use their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion, counsel those receiving their services about abortion, or to lobby their own governments for changes in abortion laws without jeopardizing U.S. aid. 78,000 women worldwide die each year from unsafe abortion.
"The Center for Reproductive Rights works with activists in more than 60 countries around the world to improve the status of women’s health and lives. The Bush gag rule is a direct assault on women’s advocates in the US and around the world who are fighting to ensure that every woman’s right to make informed decisions about her body is recognized as a human right and respected by law. The Center for Reproductive Rights is proud to support the Lee amendment and urges Members of the House to support it as well," Dempsey said.
More information about the global gag rule
