[Dialogue] Emailing: The Global War on Sex EducationIn the US and abroad, the Bush administration has severely restricted women's access to contraception - CommonDreams.org.htm

Tue Jul 22 21:39:37 EDT 2008

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Published on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/usa.sexeducation>  

The Global War on Sex Education
In the US and abroad, the Bush administration has severely restricted
women's access to contraception

by Sarah Wildman

If Barack Obama's tour of Europe and the Middle East does anything, it will
give the senator from Illinois a taste of just how desperate the world
beyond US borders is for the very brand of change he's advocated these many
months. Sure there are the obvious points: the promise to pull out of Iraq,
the reinvigoration of a kind of outwardly focused global neo-liberalism and
engagement with allies and foes alike on everything from climate change to
countering terror. But this month's World Population Day pointed to another
reason the Bushies can't leave office fast enough.

According to a new World Bank report
<http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21835941%7Epage
PK:34370%7EpiPK:34424%7EtheSitePK:4607,00.html> , despite a worldwide
increase in access to contraception and contraceptive technologies, some 51
million unintended pregnancies take place every year in the developing
world, and an additional 25 million pregnancies are gestated by women who
use faulty contraception or don't understand the methods they're using.

Of that number, according to the World Bank, some 68,000 women die from
botched or unsafe abortions each year, and some 5.1 million are left
permanently disabled by them. "Giving women access to modern contraception
and family planning also helps to boost economic growth while reducing high
birth rates so strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education and high
numbers of maternal and infant deaths," Joy Phumaphi, the World Bank's
vice-president for human development, and a former health minister in
Botswana, said in a statement.

How does that connect to the Bush administration? Simple. Since the moment
he stepped into office, Bush's commitment to the foolish "abstinence only"
training both domestically and internationally has been coupled with a
slavish devotion to the restrictive, ghoulish,
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=6955> "global gag rule",
introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1984, that cut off funding for any
organisation that used USAID funds to even touch the word "abortion". That
meant an organisation couldn't counsel a woman on abortion as an option,
even if it received money from an entirely separate funding source to do so.
Given that the 1973 Helms Amendment already banned US funds from paying for
overseas abortions, Reagan's policy gagged healthcare providers and gave
them a stark choice: lose crucial American funding (from the creation of
USAID in 1965 to 1984, some 40% of all foreign funding to population
control-oriented organisations globally came from the US), or severely limit
the way they talked about reproductive choices.

Bill Clinton repealed the policy, but Bush reinstated it the moment he
arrived in Washington, in January 2001. Then, in August 2003
<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/23722.htm> , he tried to deepen its
impact, extending the ban from USAID to the entire state department, pushing
to ban all employees at state from even discussing the consequences of
abortion. Several reports <http://www.globalgagrule.org/>  issued at the
time illustrated just how devastating Bush's policy had become. By 2002
USAID had ended shipments of contraceptives to 16 developing nations in
Africa and Asia as a direct consequence of the gag rule.

Instead of ending abortions, the global gag rule pushed women into back
alleys and undermined, even closed, organisations that would have counselled
women on how not to get pregnant in the first place. By diminishing access
to contraception, it was actually laying the groundwork for unsafe
abortions. The global gag rule didn't just gag healthcare providers about
abortion. It gagged them on contraception and education. Since 2002, the
Bush administration has also withheld funding - to the tune of $39.7m - from
the United Nations Population Fund, claiming - despite evidence
<http://www.undispatch.com/archives/2008/06/no_us_funding_f.php>  to the
contrary - that UNFPA is connected to forced abortions in China. The
shortfall from the US has also helped undermine the spread of contraception
and education around the world, particularly in Africa.

"Hundreds of women are dying every day in poor countries from botched
abortions," says Barbara Crane, executive vice-president of the North
Carolina-based reproductive rights organisation IPAS
<http://www.ipas.org/About_Us.aspx> , who wrote me by email last week. "By
repeatedly cutting the budget for international family planning and putting
in place the global gag rule, the supposedly 'pro-life' Bush administration
ignores this tragic reality - and without doubt causes more unsafe
abortions, posing high costs to women, their families and society at large.
It is ironic that the same groups that oppose abortion rarely step up and
support better access to contraception."

The Bush administration has time and again put American women's lives second
to a religiously inspired relationship to women and reproductive health.
Take their latest attempt
<http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=3299&section=newsroom>  to restrict
American women's access to contraception and the kind of pre-emptive
contraceptive measures that pro-life forces should love. In this latest
salvo, the US department of health and human services would allow any
healthcare provider the right to refuse to treat a woman, and defines
"abortion" in such a broad manner as to restrict access to IUDs, the morning
after pill, and some birth control pills. This affects any entity - from
public and private hospitals to pharmacies - that receives public funding
from HHS, explains Jill Morrison, senior counsel at the National Women
<http://www.nwlc.org> 's Law Centre. "Under the guise of simply interpreting
current law," Morrison explained, if this HHS proposal goes through it would
"completely expand the federal abortion refusal laws to include some of the
most commonly used forms of contraception." Morrison said it was fair to
call this a "domestic gag rule".

The Bush administration's relationship to sex and reproduction has been
consistently abysmal, from their utterly failed effort to promote abstinence
only
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR200704130
1003.html>  among teenagers to its unique ability to hire militantly
anti-contraception "experts" like Susan Orr
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/health/main3380290.shtml> , a
veteran of the religious Family Research Council, who was named acting
deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in October of last year
(and stepped down, quietly, in May). Orr was previously known for
championing a measure that would strip funding for birth control for federal
workers, saying she was "quite pleased because fertility is not a disease.
It's not a medical necessity that you have it" and earlier calling
contraception part of a "culture of death".

The Bush administration's notion of contraception and sex education has been
consistently - maddeningly - oxymoronic. Abortion rates are lowest in
countries where women have access to education, especially education on
contraception. So while we in the US hold our collective breath, waiting out
these last few months of Bush's efforts to restrict our freedoms, globally
women are literally dying for him to leave.

Sarah Wildman is a senior correspondent for the American Prospect and a
contributor to the New York Times.

C Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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9 Comments so far 

1.	

	Daniel David July 22nd, 2008 12:43 pm 

	This author and those who sympathize with her views are not gonna
like McCain any better. In fact, they're gonna like continuation of these
policies even less as they come to realize they are continued by a
hypocritical womanizer who intends to do so ONLY because the likes of Dobson
and the mega-church preacher supporters were his only chance in thunder to
get elected at all.

	If the Obama bashers can't even get on board for THIS cause, the
whole dang bunch of them are worse than worthless. We do not need more
abortions. We need them PREVENTED. That is what education and both "before"
and "after" contraception are about.

2.	

	hemp4victory July 22nd, 2008 1:41 pm 

	Daniel David does not want you to know that Obama went out of his
way to court the very same "evangelicals" who have no interest in dealing
with the risks associated with unintended pregnancies let alone the very
fact that these risks often force women into survival vs. death for one or
both. As long as Obama courts evangelies who hate women trying to survive
even if that means safe abortion, there's no reason to expect that he'll be
any different from Mccain once in office.

3.	

	Daniel David July 22nd, 2008 2:26 pm 

	hemp4victory,

	Of course Obama is "courting" the very same evangelicals.
They vote, you know. And there are a LOT of them. But he's not promising
them bad policy. McCain is. There is a big difference.

4.	

	bbr-001 July 22nd, 2008 3:11 pm 

	If I was married to a cutie like Laura Bush, she would have been on
the pill or we would have had 6 kids. 

	Dubya you ol' hypocrite!

	Seriously, the Reagan - Bush administration religious based strings
on aid were / are ridiculous. Can they be challenged in court?

5.	

	ladybug July 22nd, 2008 3:21 pm 

	Ok DD
In this one I do agree with you.

6.	

	MariusP July 22nd, 2008 3:32 pm 

	Daniel,

	How's it going?

	Of Course Obama would be "better" than McCain on this issue. Just
like B Clinton Was "better" than Reagan/Bush.

	But that doesn't automatically make him worth voting for. I made all
of my third party points in our back-and-forth last week. And I stand by
that. 

	Obama is clearly not going to make a dramatic change in the war (in
fact, he is calling for INCREASING the number of soldiers enlisted in the
army). He has made provocative staements about Iran. He wants more soldiers
in Afghanistan. He has shown his willingness to shred the 4th amendment. His
stance on contraceptives doesn't change all of that.

	Will he be "better" than McCain overall? Maybe. Okay, I'll give you
probably. But better than what?!? McCain will be attrocious. So why do we
want to settle for "better then attrocious?"

	If we start to support a third candidate in 2008, hopefully by 2012
they'll be enough momentum to elect someone worthwhile, and we can end the
"lesser evil" argument.

	Peace,
MariusP

7.	

	Quark July 22nd, 2008 5:44 pm 

	Making contraception widely available is one part of Earth Policy
director Lester Brown's recommendation for turning things around in his
remarkable book Plan B.3.0 He makes a compelling case. And it's not driven
by elitist desires to keep the planet nice for the chosen few but part of a
concept of poverty reduction aimed at stabilizing worldwide decent into
chaos.
It's available free on their website: http://earthpolicy.org

8.	

	Rockerbabe1 July 22nd, 2008 6:55 pm 

	Stupidity breeds ignorance and misery; Dubya has never claimed to be
smart; just capable of ruining life for everyone. Women and their bodies are
just fodder for the old boys' club and its war on women in general. I am
beginning to believe that all this religion is responsible for all the ills
of the world; the denigrading of women and often men, is just part of the
old boy's idea of holding onto power. It is a shame that they refuse to see
how destructive and painful these attitudes and policies can be; but then
again, it isn't their life, so why would they care? Women and children have
been used as sacrifices for all sorts of religions over the centuries; this
is just another form of torture and disrespect.

9.	

	queenofhearts July 22nd, 2008 7:13 pm 

	I feel very, very angry, as I read this.
It's my personal opinion that banning birth control is a tool, whether
intentional or not, that perpetuates a patriarchal society and sexism. 

	"Orr was previously known for championing a measure that would strip
funding for birth control for federal workers, saying she was "quite pleased
because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you
have it" and earlier calling contraception part of a "culture of death"." 

	It is disgusting that women would actually advocate measures that
weaken them. Fertility isn't a disease. But women ARE forced into positions
where they can't choose to have a baby or not. We have enough unwanted
children. 

	Birth control is a much better tool to decrease the human population
and its burden on nature than the right-wing sector's inhumane slaughter for
profit.

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