The US Senate voted 52-46 Tuesday to allow US foreign aid to fund family planning groups that perform or advocate abortion.
US President George W. Bush late last year extended a March 2001 order blocking the US Agency for International Development from providing grants to foreign groups supporting abortion.
That ban, sometimes referred to as the Mexico City policy or the global gag rule, denies US family planning funds to foreign organizations that counsel, perform or advocate abortion, although they do so using their own funds.
President Ronald Reagan originally imposed the ban in 1984. It was renewed by Reagans successor, George Bush, the current presidents father, but was rescinded (trukket tilbage) in 1993 by then-president Bill Clinton.
The George W. Bush administration expanded the global gag rule to cover the entire State Department budget, more than eight billion dollars.
Tuesdays vote to end the ban came as an amendment sponsored by Democrats Barbara Boxer and Patti Murray and Republican Olympia Snowe during debate on a State Department funding bill.
– The Bush administration has imposed a political ideology on the world. We cannot allow this undemocratic policy to deny women and their children health care and ultimately sentence them to die, said Murray on the Senate floor.
Murray said unwanted pregnancies are having a devastating effect in poor countries.
– It does not get much attention, but in the developing world complications from pregnancy is one of the leading causes of death for women … That is more than one woman dying every minute of every day, Murray said on the Senate floor.
After the vote, Snowe said: – The global gag rule infringes on (griber ind i) a womans right to personal, private medical care. This is a question of making sensible medical care available to women.
But her fellow Republican Sam Brownback, an outspoken advocate of curtailing abortion, called the Bush administration restrictions a “common sense policy.”
– US taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize or support organizations that perform or promote abortions for overseas family planning programs. Period (punktum), Brownback said.
Kilde: The Push Journal
