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Experts, Field Workers Urge Senate Panel to Repeal President Bush’s Global Gag Rule
July 20 – Human rights and family planning experts, joined by health providers from Peru and Nepal told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that the global gag rule imposed by President Bush on US international family planning programs will have a detrimental effect on women’s health, and curtail the right to free speech for leading health care providers around the world.
Susana Galdos Silva, a family planning provider in Peru, said that she was able to testify to the Congress and speak freely on US soil about matters related to abortion, but is forced by the Bush Administration’s global gag rule from the same speech when she is in Peru. “When I return to my country tomorrow, I will again be silenced,” Ms. Silva said.
Aryeh Neier, President of the Open Society Institute and a leader on international human rights for several decades, testified that the global gag rule “irreparably damages the association, free speech, and political advocacy rights of international human rights advocates….Impeding the information gathering and freedom of expression of human rights advocates sends a message worldwide that we are willing to diminish First Amendment protections for political ends and undermines the commitment of the United States to free dissemination of information and democratic values worldwide.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) were aimed at hearing from people directly affected by the gag rule, as well as human rights and family planning experts, and individuals and organizations who support the Bush policy. Alan Kreczko, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, testified on behalf of the Bush Administration, saying that the gag rule “represents the family planning values President Bush wants to promote as part of his foreign policy agenda.”
On his first full business day in office, President Bush issued an executive order imposing a global gag rule on international family planning providers (the order is sometimes referred to as the Mexico City policy). 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.
At today’s hearing experts indicated that the global gag rule diminishes 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 was 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.
Senator Boxer has sponsored legislation – the Global Democracy Promotion Act – that would over turn President Bush’s gag rule. The Boxer legislation, cosponsored by one-quarter of the Senate, would prevent 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.
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.
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