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Tell President Bush to repeal the global gag rule!
Tell the president to stop putting the lives of women and children at risk!
Dear [ Decision Maker ] , I am writing to urge you to repeal the global gag rule and cease your attacks on international family planning. The global gag rule jeopardizes the health and well-being of women and their families by forcing established family planning organizations to close clinics, eliminate services, and cease providing contraceptives. In developing countries, access to family planning is often a matter of life or death. One woman dies every minute due to pregnancy-related causes that could have been prevented with access to family planning. In addition, more than 75,000 women die each year due to complications related to unsafe abortion -- a number that could also be greatly reduced with expanded access to family planning. As these grim statistics show, access to international family planning is a serious public health issue, not a political one. It is time to take politics out of the picture and reverse policies that block health providers from delivering services that are paramount to the health and wellness of the world's most disenfranchised populations.
Sincerely, |
Campaign Launched: |
Four years ago, on his first day in office, President Bush issued an executive order reinstating the global gag rule on international family planning assistance. The policy denies U.S. federal family planning funding to any foreign nongovernmental organization (NGO) that uses any of its own private, non-U.S. dollars to| Background Information |
It has never been easy to fully quantify the impact of the global gag rule. Its ramifications are insidious and have occured over many years. It is impossible to track how many deaths have been associated with the lack of services that could have been provided in the absence of a gag rule, how many advocates were silenced and denied the freedom to speak out about a devastating public health issue, or how many organizations were prohibited from working with their governments and other NGOs to meet the serious healh care needs of their own countries.
We do know, however, that individuals as well as organizations are affected: there is less contraception available worldwide; fewer clinics are open to deliver a wide range of services; and HIV/AIDS prevention efforts are compromised.
- In Côte d'Ivoire, the Association Ivoirienne pour le Bien-Être Familial lost $186,000 for contraceptive supplies, eliminating contraceptive services from nearly half of their 92 distribution points.
- The Family Planning Association of Kenta, which received an average of $580,000 per year to fund its clinics, had to close three urban clinics serving 56,000 poor and underserved clients.
- The St. Lucia Planned Parenthood Association was forced to cancel plans to train 218 "peer helpers: from eight secondary schools and one primary school. This program would have reached 12,000 school-aged children with information about HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health.
Learn more about the effects of the global gag rule.