Planned Parenthood and DU Valentine Hearts

[iverglas]

198. Bush, Obama and the global gag rule - anybody remember?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/barack-obama-foreign-abortion-aid

Friday 23 January 2009 16.23 GMT

President Barack Obama today made the most contentious move of his young administration with an order, overturning a ban on federal funds to foreign family planning organisations that either offer abortions or provide information or counselling about abortion.

... It will allow US aid, usually through the US agency for international development, to flow to HIV/Aids clinics, birth-control providers and other organisations that advocate or provide counselling about abortion across the world. It is known as the "global gag rule" because it denies US taxpayer dollars to clinics that even mention abortion to women with unplanned pregnancies.

The rule was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, overturned by Bill Clinton in 1993, and reinstated by Bush. Critics of the rule say it deprives the world's poor women of desperately needed medical care, while proponents say US tax dollars should not promote abortion.

The issue was the same as with PP domestically in the US: the result of denying funding is to deny disadvantaged women access to basic health care services.

Signing the order was the very first thing Bush did after his first inauguration, in 2001.

Repealing it was the second thing Obama did -- after pledging to close Guantanamo.

When Bush signed the order, people worldwide made donations to Planned Parenthood International and other organizations that provided women's reproductive health care in less developed countries ... in George W. Bush's name, so he got the thank-you messages. (Planned Parenthood Canada, which is purely an information and counselling, non-medical organization, launched that campaign here.)

So Skinner, I think the initiative is excellent -- yes of course Planned Parenthood is à propos for Valentine's Day! Its history is the fight for women's reproductive rights, which women must be able to exercise in order to enjoy intimate relationships without coercion of any kind, and it is a favourite right-wing punching bag. Nothing could be more appropriate.



(Of course it does leave us foreigners out in the cold a little, but most of us enjoy the heath care services that PP provides, already ...)