Bush’s policies attack women’s rights globally

Around the world, 75,000 women die annually from unsafe
abortions. And help is not on the way. On the contrary, family
planning clinics that provide ““ or even just discuss ““
abortions have been denied funding, which not only ignores the
problem, but exacerbates it.

Immediately after his first election, Bush reinstated the global
gag rule, preventing any foreign U.S. Aid for International
Development family planning clinic from receiving U.S. funds if
they provided, discussed, or lobbied the government regarding
abortions. The clinics were threatened with a loss of U.S. funds
even if the aforementioned activities were carried out with funds
from non-U.S. sources.

The result is a degradation of women’s rights around the
world and massive disruptions to agencies that provide prevention
education and treatment for HIV/AIDS.

In Ethiopia, 301,054 urban women have lost access to family
planning clinics. No family planning agencies provide abortion
services in Ethiopia, as abortions are banned by Ethiopian law.
However, they do publicly discuss the contribution of illegal and
unsafe abortions to Ethiopia’s dreadfully high maternal
mortality rate ““ and they lost their funding.

Talk of high mortality rates, despite the obvious benefits, is
apparently too appalling for our president, whose global gag rule
cost Ethiopia’s family planning clinics a half million
dollars in the first few years of its implementation.

Public debate is stifled, even if these clinics tout their ideas
on women’s health with their own funds, reserving U.S. funds
for sponsoring abstinence and the promulgation of knowledge that
Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson deem pertinent.

Because these beleaguered family planning clinics also work for
HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, the global gag rule has not only
prevented countless scores of women in the third world from gaining
access to safe, legal abortions or even counseling, it has
obstructed access to HIV/AIDS relief and prevention.

This is horrible news for the people of Zambia, where 16.5
percent of the adult population suffers from AIDS or HIV. By July
2003, Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia had, for financial
reasons, closed a third of its clinics.

And this tragic lack of needed funding for family planning
clinics is not confined to Ethiopia and Zambia, nor do these
countries bear disproportionate burdens resulting from the global
gag rule. Rather, sad and senseless stories abound in Africa and
elsewhere.

Even the distribution of condoms is under attack. The annual
donation of condoms worldwide has decreased from 800 million under
the last President George Bush to only 300 million under the
current President George W. Bush.

Condoms, although appalling to various Republican senators and
televangelists, are a cheap way of preventing not only AIDS ““
compare a year’s supply of condoms to a year’s supply
of anti-retroviral drugs ““ but also of preventing unwanted
pregnancies and, by extension, the need for abortions that the
right so abhors.

On inauguration day last Thursday, George W. Bush proclaimed
that “America’s belief in human dignity will guide our
policies.” If we were talking to one of the 697,000 Ghanaians
who will no longer have access to HIV/AIDS testing and prevention
education, we might feel uncomfortable explaining that our belief
in human dignity is the cause. It might come off as
disingenuous.

By reinstating the gag rule, Bush is neither spreading freedom
nor seeking unity in a divided country. He is not helping Africa,
nor is he boosting our image abroad. Bush is pandering to the
Christian right, a sadly sizeable group of fundamentalists whose
influence in government has been inappropriately huge since he came
into office.

Not only is this marriage of church and state an
unconstitutional one, but health crises around the world,
disproportionately affecting the poorest of the world’s poor,
have been tacitly encouraged. In countries where women’s
rights are frequently precarious at best, the Bush administration
has actively prevented them from controlling their own bodies.

Bush might like us to think that, anywhere in the world, no
terrorist is beyond the reach of the United States.

It might be more appropriate to assert that Bush’s goal is
to make sure that no uterus is beyond the reach of the United
States.

Health crises, blurring lines between church and state, empty
rhetoric, and setbacks to women’s rights around the world
““ Bush really knows how to win hearts and minds,
doesn’t he?

Clark is the Bruin Democrats media relations director. Nenni
is the Bruin Democrats issues director.