Global Gag Rule stands firm: CRLP lawsuit against Bush rejected. (News and Meetings).

September 13, 2002 - In a decision that the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) termed "disappointing," the U.S. Second District Appellate Court rejected CRLP's lawsuit against the Global Gag Rule which was approved by President George W. Bush immediately after he assumed the presidency. Previously, in May 2002, the case had been denied by federal court judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York.

In the lawsuit against the Global Gag Rule, CRLP argued that the policy violates the rights to free speech of those who defend human rights in the United States and abroad by prohibiting: use of the mass media to organize debates and public protests demanding the legalization of abortion or promoting safe abortion services; use of debates, meetings, protests or the media to publish or disseminate truthful information about abortion or in support of a less restrictive approach to abortion; expression of any opinion about abortion that is contrary to the official position of the U.S. government, which opposes the safe and legal practice of abortion; presentation to the U.S. Congress of information about abortion from a positive perspective or lobbying for less restrictive legislation; participation in discussions on the internet about abortion and/or the dissemination of information on the internet that casts a favorable light upon the practice of safe and legal abortion; promotion of the opinion that legal abortions are part of the international human right to health or an independent international right in the United Nations conferences or publicly in the United States or in any other country.

In effect, the Global Gag Rule means that groups working in critical areas of reproductive health have been forced to severely limit the projects that benefit women of some of the most vulnerable sectors in developing nations. Because of its dramatic and far-reaching consequences, the Global Gag Rule been widely rejected throughout the United States as well as in other regions, including Europe, where 233 members of the European Parliament from 20 countries, signed an historical declaration condemning this law.

In related news, the Bush administration also recently announced its decision to withdraw its financial support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a total of 34 million dollars for Fiscal Year 2002. This decision was justified under the erroneous claim that this UN agency supports the Chinese government's policy of allowing only one child per couple, which could be seen as favoring the practice of abortion.

According to UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid, this withdrawal of funds will have tragic consequences in the lives of millions of women and young people in the poorest countries, who will no longer benefit from the reproductive health and comprehensive health programs that have been developed by this organization.

In response to these situations, numerous women's organizations and networks have sent letters of protest, claiming that the Bush policy not only fails to recognize the achievements of the ICPD Conference, which promoted improved sexual and reproductive health services, but also is an attempt to violate the basic human rights of the most impoverished peoples, who are most likely to depend on the assistance of the UNFPA in order to meet their health needs. The financial aid withdrawn by the U.S. would have prevented some two million unplanned pregnancies and more than 77 million infant deaths, according to UNEPA estimates.

To remedy this situation, the European Union has announced its decision to supply the financial support withdrawn by Bush.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has allotted almost 30 million dollars to support events and groups that promote sexual abstinence among unmarried teens in the U.S. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, presented an allotment of 95 subsidies, for a total of 27.7 million dollars, which will be distributed to churches, schools or health centers with the purpose of persuading adolescents of both sexes to postpone initiating sexual relationships.

The United States government maintains that these types of sexual abstinence programs reduce the number of unwanted births and decrease the spread of sexually transmitted infections which today affect a significant number of young people in this country. Nonetheless, these programs fail to offer essential information about other contraceptive methods or different forms of preventing the spread of STIs besides abstinence. Not only does this lack of information constitute a serious shortcoming of these programs, but it also violates the right to full information on methods to prevent pregnancy and transmission of STIs as stipulated by the Cairo and Beijing agreements. However, U.S. federal law on such programs states that federal moneys can only be used to teach adolescents that sexual relationships outside of marriage have "harmful consequences."

* For more information about the CRLP lawsuit, visit: www.crlp.org/hill_ggr_litigation.html