Mexico City Policy Rescinded
FrontLines - February 2009
By Ashtar Analeed Marcus
President Barack Obama on Jan. 23 rescinded the Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule,” which prohibited
U.S. funding of international
NGOs that offered counseling on abortion.
The policy was created under President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The policy was repealed
in 1993 under President Bill Clinton and reinstated in 2001 under President George W. Bush.
“For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back-and-forth debate that has served only to divide us,” Obama said. “I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.”
Many NGOs involved in international family planning welcomed the Obama decision.
“For eight long years, the global gag rule has been used by the Bush administration to play politics with the lives
of poor women across the world,” International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Gill Greer in London told the Washington Post.
USAID spent $457 million for family planning activities in 2008.
Women and couples using contraceptives in developing countries rose from less than 10 percent in the 1960s to more than 50 percent today, in large part due to U.S. assistance programs.
The average number of children born in these countries decreased from six to three over those years, according to USAID officials. ★
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