Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Belated notice of a quick anti-Luddite Twenty-First Century Obama policy shift.

Reagan did it, Clinton removed it, Bush redid it; and it's both stupid and offensive.

And mean-spirited and divisive.

Ms. Magazine blurbs it with a link to a longer story:

UPDATE | winter 2009

UPDATE: Global Gag Rule Repealed

On just his third day in office, President Barack Obama lifted the odious policy known as the Global Gag Rule, which prevented family planning clinics outside the U.S. from receiving U.S. aid if they dared to refer women to safe abortion providers—or even advocated abortion law reform in their countries.

The rule was first instituted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, repealed by President Bill Clinton in 1992, and reinstated by President George W. Bush. In part because of restricted access to reproductive health services caused by the rule—including a halt in condom shipments—more than 70,000 women die annually from unsafe abortions worldwide, and the incidence of HIV/AIDS is skyrocketing.

To get a sense of what the lifting of the gag rule may mean to women, please read again, or for the first time, “Global Sex Rules: The Price of Silence.”