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House Panel Votes to Overturn Bush Gag Rule
May 2 – This afternoon, the House International Relations Committee (HIRC) approved, on a 26-22 vote, an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act that would overturn the controversial global gag rule imposed by President Bush earlier this year on international family planning programs.
On his first full business day in office, President Bush issued an Executive Order instituting a global gag rule on international family planning providers. The President’s Executive Order denies US funding to any foreign non-governmental organizations that uses its own funds to provide information or counseling related to abortion services, or to voice an opinion about abortion laws in their own countries.
On his first full business day in office, President Bush issued an Executive Order instituting a global gag rule on international family planning providers. The President’s Executive Order denies US funding to any foreign non-governmental organizations that uses its own funds to provide information or counseling related to abortion services, or to voice an opinion about abortion laws in their own countries.
President Bush’s decision to impose a global gag rule has been one of the more controversial decisions of his administration and has been ardently opposed by a broad coalition of population, development, environment and human rights organizations, as well as foreign governments, particularly key allies in Europe. At home, more than 70 newspapers from all across the United States have editorialized against the Bush Administration’s global gag rule. Similarly, a Newsweek poll in February showed that the majority of Americans opposed the gag rule
Experts have indicated that the global gag rule will diminish family planning, women’s health and HIV/AIDS prevention efforts around the world by denying funds to some of the most accomplished family planning providers. Moreover, it has been pointed out that the gag rule runs contrary to basic freedoms of speech in the United States and would be unconstitutional if imposed on US-based organizations. Finally, President Bush’s global gag rule is among other decisions of the new Administration criticized as being anti-environmental.
The amendment was approved during HIRC consideration of legislation authorizing State Department spending programs for 2002 and 2003. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) sponsored the amendment to address concerns about the gag rule’s anti-democratic nature by preventing the Bush Administration from denying funds to foreign non-governmental organizations:
a) if such organizations use their own, non-US funds to provide health services that are consistent with the laws of the country in which they are being provided and that would be legal if provided in the United States; and
b) that are more restrictive on the foreign organizations than they are on US-based NGOs.
The Lee amendment is identical to a bill introduced in the House and Senate earlier this year -- the Global Democracy Promotion Act – and has garnered bipartisan support with 115 House cosponsors and 24 Senate cosponsors.
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