Bush Administration “Breaks the Promise” by Expanding Global Gag Rule to HIV Funding On Eve of World AIDS Day ::::warning, PDF link::::

Washington, D.C. – In a stealth move intended to draw little public notice, the Bush Administration has formally expanded the Global Gag Rule to U.S. global AIDS funding under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), according to the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).  The restrictions appear as part of a five-year, $193 million request for applications (RFA) for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in Kenya released late Friday, November 18th  by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  The RFA, entitled, “HIV/AIDS & Tuberculosis, treatment, care and support” references the gag rule twice in stating eligibility criteria, stating that all consortium partners must “agree, to abide by the Mexico City Policy, the Tiahrt Amendment, and all USAID policies and regulations.”  (For a summary of the grant see www.genderhealth.org/kenyagrant.php, as well as to find links to the original RFA and related documents).

In August 2003, President Bush released an Executive Order specifically exempting U.S. global AIDS funds from gag rule restrictions.  “The theme of World AIDS Day 2005 is `Keep the Promise.’  In expanding the Global Gag Rule to U.S. global AIDS funding on the eve of World AIDS Day, the Administration has broken its own written commitment not to subject global AIDS funds to these onerous restrictions,” stated Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director of CHANGE.  

The Gag Rule, also known as the “Mexico City Policy,” denies U.S. international family planning funding to foreign non-governmental organizations that provide safe abortion services, counseling, referral, or information on safe abortion, advocate for changes in abortion law in their own country, conduct research on the effects of unsafe abortion, or otherwise work on safe abortion issues.  

The Global Gag Rule undermines efforts to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place by crippling family planning programs that do so much as collect data on unsafe abortion.  It also hobbles efforts to address the toll taken on women’s lives worldwide by complications of unsafe abortion, sexually transmitted infections, complications of labor and delivery, and other leading causes of illness and death among women worldwide.  According to conservative estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 600,000 women worldwide die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, of which at least 78,000 women worldwide die as a result of complications of unsafe abortion in a desperate effort to terminate unintended pregnancies.  In Kenya, where abortion is illegal, complications of unsafe abortion are a leading killer of married women in their twenties and thirties.  The Kenya Family Planning Association lost U.S. funding because it refused to forgo the right to discuss the toll of unsafe abortion on the lives of women in Kenya.  “Loss of this funding has severely undermined efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy in Kenya through expansion of voluntary family planning as well as to prevent HIV infections in women,” according to Dr. Godwin Mzenge, Executive Director of Family Planning Association of Kenya.

Women and girls make up 60 percent of those infected by HIV in sub-Saharan hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, and the rate of new infections is highest among women in their twenties and thirties in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and in other “hotspots” such as India.  “Given these realities, this shift in policy goes beyond hypocrisy to sheer irresponsibility and complete disregard for the lives and welfare of women and girls worldwide,” asserted Jacobson.

“More to the point, this move will further undermine the ability of reproductive health, family planning and maternal and child health programs to reach women and girls with life-saving information and technologies for the prevention of HIV infection at a time when 5 million lives are being lost to HIV/AIDS every year and when an increasingly disproportionate number of those deaths are among women,” stated Jacobson.

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To some extent, Jacobson noted, the expansion of the gag rule to HIV funding represents a “formal admission” of what the Administration has been doing all along–excluding family planning and maternal and child health programs from U.S.-funded HIV prevention efforts. Field research by CHANGE has shown that since 2003, family planning organizations in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda have been outright denied funding under PEPFAR due to confusion about the application of the Global Gag Rule and due to the rush by this Administration to fund “faith- based” groups, shift prevention funding to abstinence-only programs, and otherwise undermine effective HIV and reproductive health programs.  The deterioration of basic family planning services and their inability to respond effectively to the needs of their clients for HIV prevention was a key concern identified by the 22 representatives of 6 PEPFAR focus countries that attended a meeting held by CHANGE in Kenya in September this year.  

Make no mistake about this people. This is a death sentence for poor African women and men and others around the world.  Next time you shake the hand of anyone who helped put George W Bush in office, be sure and thank them. But wear gloves — their hands will be covered in blood.

for more information under this week’s “under the radar” rethuglican action go here: Center for Health and Gender Equality.

This was originally posted at Our Word in Reproductive Rights, Week in Review, Nov. 20-26