Naively, I thought the battle over the Global Gag rule had been won, at least while Barack Obama is president of the United States. Also known as the Mexico City rule, it's the legislation brought in by successive Republican administrations in the US to block federal money from being given to any family planning provider in the developing world that helps, or even just advises, women who come looking for an abortion.
But no. Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, rescinded the legislation that George Bush had reinstated. Now, however, the Republican majority in the House wants to bring it back again. This is the text of their proposal in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act (H.R. 1), adopted by the House on a party-line vote of 235 to 189 on 19 February:
None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this division for the department of state, foreign operations, and related programmes for population planning activities or other population assistance may be made available to any foreign non-governmental organisation that promotes or performs abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother would be endangered if the foetus were carried to term.
The fight over abortion within the US, although impassioned and sometimes violent, arguably does not have quite the scale of malign consequences that a reimposed Global Gag could have. The reason why this is an issue with horrifying repercussions in poor countries is that contraception is not widely and easily available, and many women who get pregnant do not want and cannot afford to look after a child. For some of them, becoming pregnant is a desperate business – so desperate that they will risk their lives in the hands of a back-street abortionist rather than go through with it.
But besides restricting abortion, failure to fund family planning services that will not undertake never to mention the A-word also cuts access to condoms and other contraception. This is what Population Action International, based in Washington, says about it:
The destructive legacy of the Gag Rule during the Bush administration speaks for itself. In more than 1,300 communities in Ghana, women faced reduced access to contraception. In Kenya, eight reproductive health clinics had to close their doors entirely. And in Nepal, 60 health workers from the organisation responsible for the vast majority of family planning services delivered by non-governmental groups were laid off, leaving clinics without a full-time doctor.
It adds that the Global Gag even prevents organisations using their own – as well as federal – funds to provide abortion services or counselling. If that were introduced in the US, it would be unconstitutional. So it's one law for the rich and free – and quite another for the poor and oppressed.
On another issue entirely, while I've been away writing about healthcare in France (here and here) and also in Spain (here), a few things have come my way that I have failed to blog on. One of them was a full day of action by the Student Stop Aids Campaign in the UK, targeting the drug company Johnson & Johnson, which has opted not to join the patent pool for Aids medicines.
Another was a report from the Results for Development Institute, launched at the White House, exploring the idea of offering prizes to spur the development of new health technologies, such as drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices, in the developing world. As an example, it looks at the possibility of prizes as incentives for companies willing to try to develop new and much-needed diagnostic tests for tuberculosis.
