Release Date: January 23, 2009

Global Gag Rule

President Barack Obama has taken an important first step in ushering in a new day for women’s health here in the United States and around the world by overturning the harmful “global gag rule.” President Obama has signaled to the rest of the world that the United States will once again be a leader in the fight for equal access to health care and reproductive rights.

With the overturning of the global gag rule, a stranglehold on women’s health around the world has been lifted, and more than 200 million women around the globe will be able to access critical basic services, including safe abortion and birth control. Local reproductive health care organizations abroad will now be able to offer counseling, referral, and services for the full range of reproductive health options without fear that the U.S. government will strip them of their funding. Expanding access to services like birth control, annual exams, and safe abortion will help save women’s lives.

The History

On his first business day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush reinstated the restrictive global gag rule, a Reagan-era prohibition, that dictated that no U.S. family planning assistance funding go to organizations that provided abortion services, offered counseling and referral for abortion care, or advocated legal abortion access in their own countries — even if they did so with their own funds.

Because of the global gag rule, local reproductive health care organizations abroad have faced a dangerous dilemma for eight long years. Today these organizations will not have to make the devastating choice between either accepting desperately needed U.S. funds but deny women lifesaving services and information, or rejecting U.S. assistance and be forced to cut crucial prevention services.