The Bush Administration and Gag Rule Expansion: Background

August 29, 2003: President Bush issued an executive memorandum late Friday extending the global gag rule to family planning funds administered by the U.S. Department of State. This most recent attack follows biting criticism Bush received this week when he officially withdrew funding from the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium, which provides reproductive health and HIV prevention services for refugee women - some of the most vulnerable women in the world.

April 29, 2003: President Bush today asked Congress for swift approval of his $15 billion Global AIDS Initiative, bowing to a bipartisan insistence that abortion politics be kept out of it.

Speaking from the East Room in the White House, Bush praised a House version of the measure, sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), that does not include riders favored by Bush’s conservative base. A full House vote could come this week.

During weeks of debate on the bill, Hyde and Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) had to fend off repeated efforts by conservatives to remove references to condoms, promote use of education for sexual abstinence and attach a global gag rule that now applies to family planning programs overseas.

Hyde and Lantos argued that such attachments would bog down the urgent funding measure in domestic U.S. political issues and cost the lives of countless women worldwide. Under their measure, $15 billion would be used over five years to provide low-cost drugs, family treatment and education programs in developing countries. Family planning organizations now under the gag rule would be required to separate their AIDS programs in order to receive the new funding.

April 17, 2003: Legislation to triple U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS treatment programs around the world is making its way to the House floor without onerous “global gag rule” restrictions that opponents of family planning had tried to attach to it.

House leaders, spearheaded by Reps. Henry J. Hyde (R-IL) and Tom Lantos (D-CA), persuaded the Bush administration that applying the so-called “Mexico City policy” to the $15 billion AIDS Initiative would have bogged the urgent program down in abortion politics, costing the lives of countless people worldwide.

The House International Relations Committee, of which Hyde is chair, approved the five-ear package earlier this month on a vote of 37 to 8. However, other House members are expected to try again to attach gag rule provisions to the measure when it reaches the House floor.

March 18, 2003: The Bush administration today backed away from a plan to expand the so-called “Mexico City policy” to cover HIV/AIDS funding. House leaders, spearheaded by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), won the administration’s commitment that the “global gag rule” will not be part of the president’s new $15 billion Global AIDS Initiative when it is introduced. Lantos said the shift resulted from a genuine desire on all sides to speed the AIDS funding, which otherwise would have been delayed by the gag rule controversy.

However, other House members are expected to try to attach the gag rule later as the measure moves toward passage. It would affect not only new HIV/AIDS funds but several other programs crucial to saving women’s lives, inclouding those combating gender-based violence and maternal mortality.

February 2003: A Feb. 11 State Department memo recommends expanding the so-called "Mexico City policy" to cover HIV/AIDS funding and several other program areas crucial to saving women’s lives, including those combating gender-based violence and maternal mortality.

The Bush administration, as reported in news outlets including The New York Times, presented the change as if it were a relaxation rather than an extension of this dangerous policy. In fact it opens a new front in the administration’s global war on women.

Letter from more than 300 leading parliamentarians, public health practitioners, and religious leaders opposing expansion of the Global Gag Rule