GT+Gag+Rule

Contention One is Inherency Despite the recent House vote, the Mexico City policy will continue to prohibit foreign assistance to all organizations that support abortion as an option available for women. If current legislaflon !ifting this Gag Rule survives a polarized Senate, it only awaits a Presidential veto. Life Site News, PeterJ. Srr 7/4/07, http://www.tifesite.net/Idn/2OO7/juIJO7O7O4O7.htnil WASHINGTON DC. July 4,2007 {LifesiteNews.coni) — The United States Senate will soon vote on a bill that significantly undermines the current ban on providing funds to groups that directly support abortion last Thursday the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $34.2 bilUon 2008 fpreign aid spending bill that includes $461 million for “family planning and reproductive heaith programs The bill resembles the one passed by the House of Representatives in June (HR 2764) that would provide US donated contraceptives, not funds, to overseas groups that proniote abortion among indigent people. Pro-life advocates accuse the bill of essentially overturning the US “Mexico City” policy begun by President Reagan in 1984 that prohibits any US foreign aid to groups that promote abortion in other countdes. President Bush resurrected the policy in 2001 immediately upon taking office from President Bill Clinton, who had rescinded it at the beginning of his eight yea term. Rep. Nita Lowey (fl-NY), one of the House bill’s main architects, had originally drafted the legislation to provide funds forgroups that promote abortion as long as they used some of it for contraception After intense opposition, she crafted the bill so that the overseas groups would receive aid via donated US contraceptives. However, according to pro-life Congressmen, donating contraceptives as aid would free up pro-abortion organization resources allowing them to aggressively promote abortion in poorer countries. “ bill represents an unconscionable policy reversal that dramatically weakens current pro-life policies,” said Republican minority leader John Boehner (R-OH). “ look forward to the President’s VetD. Pro-life Reps. Chris Smith CR-NJ) and Bait Stupak (0-MI) offered their own pro-life amendment that would keep the Mexico City policy intact by prohibiting any US support for these groups, but it was narrowly defeated by 218-205. The legislation is expected to have a more difficult time Dassiflg the Senate, where the Democrat majority holds control by one seat. President Bush nevertheless has vowed he will veto any legislation intended to weaken federal policies or laws on abortion, including any proposal that would “allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life

Thus the plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its funding toward comprehensive reproductive and sexual health

Contention 2 The impact of the Global Gag Rule in Kenya transcends abortion services, taking a toll on all reproductive health. Funding cuts, resource shortages, and clinic closures impose devastating limits on accessibility and availability of reproductive health services ranging from maternal and child care to condom distribution. Global Gag Rule Impact Project 2006. a collaborative research effort led by Population Action International in partnership wfth Ipas and Planned Parenthood, http://www.g kenya.htrn The effects of the Global Gag Rule, compounded by the global shift of funding from family planning to HIV/AIDS are far-reaching in Kenya. The country’s two leading reproductive health organizations - Marie Stopes International Kenya ( Kenya) and the Family PIann Association of Kenya ( - are important providers of reproductive hea!th servkes, including prenatal and postnatal obstetric care and HIVIADS prevention efforts, especi&Iy in rural areas. In many underserved areas their clinics are the only source ot affordable primary health care. After refusing the terms of the gag rule in 2001. both organizations lost critical U.S. family planning funds MSI Kenya shuttered two clinics in 2002 and has only Drevented the closure of further clinics by raising prices and laying off staff members. At the same time. FPAK’s attempts to raise enough money to fill the void left by U.S. funds have failed After initially closing three clinics in 2001 and 2002, the organization closed three more of its 12 remainingclinics in March 2005. These clinics provided critical services to poor and underserved popuIat in urban, pen-urban and rural areas; those services included: Jfam planning (including the provision of emergency contraception), voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) for HIV/AIDS, management of sexually transmitted Infections, pharmaceutical services, laboratory services, Dost-abortion care maternal and child health services, Pap smear tests, minor surgery, and well—baby services. 1 Fo!Iowing the closure of these clinics in 2005, at least 9000 people — primarily women and children — were left with little or no access to health care, “The Global Gag Rule does not moke sense. It is not applied to the United States, instead, it is applied to countries that are the poorest ... that have the highest rate of maternal mortality.” One of the rna impacts of the gag rule in Kenya is the immense reduction of community outreach efforts to poor and vulnerable populations. FPAK and MSI Kenya were the country’s leadinfi providers of reproductive heaith care to people living in poor and rural communities u.s. funds supported the work of FPAK community health volunteers, providing the contraceptive supplies that volunteers distributed in rural areas and covering the out-of-pocket expenses volunteers incurred, including transportation costs. Underthe gag rule, this funding for volunteer activities stopped, and FPAK and MSI Kenya had to drastically reduce outreach activities. Funding shortages have also led to a lack of regular contraceptive technology updates for community health workers.

The Gag Rule and the Denial of Lifesaving Care to Impo Peoples Causes Governments States Treat Whole Populations as Disposable Berta Esperanza Hernandez—TruyoI Levin, Mabie, & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Fiedric G. Levin School of L “Family Planning and AIDS Policy in the International Community: On Disposable People and Human Weli-Being: Health Money, nd Power,” 13 UC Davis Journal of Internaflonal I.aw & Policy 35, FaIl o06. In Soobramoney v. Minister of Health, the South African Consututional Court upheld a hospital administrations decision to provide dialysis only to those who were eligible for transplants, i.e., those patients who, in the judgment of the state, could be ‘cured.” Conversely, the state could deny dialysis treatments to patients ineligible for transplants, i.e., for whom it would simply be palliative care, notwithstanding whether the treatments would be beneficial to the patient’s length or quality of life. The Soobramoney Court’s reasoning, ostensibly a rational allocation of scarce resources case, might be palatable or necessary in non-health related contexts. It held that the state, which has limited means, can make the difficult decision on how best to utilize its available resources. However, r dealing with health matters, this framework has the state effectively deciding which life to value. Each re-reading of Soobramoney increases my dkcomfort with the decision and the reasoning behind It. To be sure, no one can argue with the reality of a states finite resources. But it seems inappropriate, if not alarming, to place the potentially life and death delivery of health care services decision-making power on a governmental body with its attendant and ubiquitous structural pre The process unveils and underscores some reasons for concern. For example, until very recently in South Africa, 1 all classes of nonwhites were disposable people - second-class citizens who were denied well-being In addition, to make treatment delivery options contingent on the state’s i of the treatment being curative is inappropriate Nobody has a preordained time-line. Anyone can be healthy and be invoI in a tragic accident or suffer a catastrophic illness and be gone in an instant. Specifically with regard to the Soobramoney rationale, even with respect to those eligible for transplants, there are enormous risks and contingencies involved. For one, the transplant might not take. Similarty, an organ might not be available for transplant, or a person who undergoes a successful transplant may have an accidental death or suffer an unrelated, yet still, terminal, illness. Moreover, afthough a treatment may be palliative, one day a cure may be found for the disease. Alternatively, as in the HIV/AIDS case, the paihative treatment may effect.ivePy indefinitely prolong life although it does not effect a cure. The possibilities concerning efficacy of treatments are innumerable. Thus, having the state decide the guidelines for who gets treatment and who does not effectively deciding who lives and who does not - reasonable as the guidelines may appear to be - seems to be a hugely dangerous proposition particularly in a world where not all lives are valued equally, in a world that is replete with disposable people In this regard, the ostensibly clear line drawn by the Soobrarroney Court between palliative and curative care is deeply flawed. The palliative/curative distinction is not a bright, clear fine; rather, it is part of a continuum. The I-nv/AIDS pandemic exposes this reality. Medications that have been developed, while not curative, in fact have the effect of the indefinite prolongation of life. As such, the palliative function of the medications blurs the line to cure because they do more than reduce the violence of a disease. Thus, we should consider health care delivery to be a ørocess that operates along a life/death continuum. The process ranges from prevention to cure The del)very of health care services and treatment that takes place along this life/death continuum works to effect human dignity and weII-bein Human well-being is an international human right This goal of human thriving involves the rights to health, health care, life, family, information, nondiscrimination; and conditions for an adequate standard of living. Yet as the figures for the gag rule and the HlV/AIDS statistics reveal, these rights are at best illusory for vulnerable populations. Disposable peoDle - the poor, the ill the disempowereclnd disenfranchised, women and children. populations from the South and the East - all disproportionately lack access to we The effects of the Global Gag Rule on health care and the realities ot HI V/AIDS epidemictor disposable populations provide lessons to be [ learned about human rights, economic power, and human well-being. Both show the connection of money and health. An analysis of the gag rule reveals that it can be interpreted as an imperial power move that contributes to the deterioration of health. It deploys economic power to ignore sovereignty and subtract from human well-being The policy purposely denies access to funds that enable the provision of he education, supplies, and services simply to implement political ideology. Ironically, while claiming a policy of preventing loss of life through prohibition of abortion, the gag rule policy actually costs more lives by not engaging in programs that car reduce maternal and infant mortality Significantly, the policy also deleteriously results in more orphans (who are usually left in very vulnerable and unstable situations) and in the failure to provide certain services and supplies necessary for HI V/AIDS victims. This reveals a direct link between economic power (quantity of aid) and availability of service. The HlV/AIDS example, on the other hand, unveils both direct and indirect connections between money and health. As suggested above, the gag rule affects delivery of some HIV/AIDS-related services although that is not the intent of the policy and, indeed, separate HIV/AIDS USAID funding would, in theory, be able to support the delivery of supplies and services. Beyond the gag rule, it has become evident that state5 with greater access to economic resources can better protect their endangered ill citizens. However an important lesson, that is significant to any analysis of health as a fundamental human right, can be learned from the HI V/AIDS treatment options. The scientific progress in treating HIV/AlDS blurs the palliative/curative line and instead places health care delivery on a prevention to cure continuum. Lack of clear lines separating pal treatment frém curative treatment exacerbates the problem of economic access. The concern is that the most disempowered persons around the world North and South, East and West alike - women and children, the aged, the poor, the ill, the infirm - may lack the economic power to enjoy the benefits ol human well-being if delivery of health care services is based upon an econometric model that includes evaluating whether the treatment can effect a cure This reality provides the foundation for starting a conversation about the reconstruction of the health paradigm along dignitary lines.

Treating Populations as Disposable Based on Economic Status or Race Has Led The United States To Engage in a New Form of Biopolitics, Encouraging Death, Violence, and Disposability Henry A. Giroux Global TV Network Chair ProfessorsNp at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department, “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,” College Literature, 7/1/06. In the current historical moment, as Catherine,MilIs points out, “all subjects are at least potentially if not actually abandoned by the law and exposed to violence as a constitutive condition of political existence” (2004,47). Nicholas Mirzoeff has observed that all over the world there is a growing resentnient of immigrants and refugees, matched by the emergence of detain-and-deport strategies and coupled with the rise of the camp as the key institution and social model of the new miflennium. The “empire of camps,” according to Mirzoeff, has become the exemplary institution of a system of global capitalism that supports the West in its high consumption, low-price consumer lifestyle” (2005, 145). Zygrunt Bauman calls such camps “garrisons of extraterritoriality” and argues that they have become “the dumping grounds far the indisposed of and as yet unrecycled waste of the global frontier-land’ (2003,109).The regime of the camp has increasingly become a key index of modernity and the new world order. The connections among disposability, violence, and death iave become common under modernity in those countries where the order of power has become necropolitical For example, Rosa Linda Fregoso analyzes feminicide as a local expression of global violence against women in the region of the U.S/Mexico border where over one thousand women have been either murdered or disappeared, constituting what amounts to a “politics of gender exterminat (2006, 109).The politics of disposability and necropolitics not only generate widespread violence and ever expanding “garrisons of extraterritoriality” but also have taken on a powerful new significance as a foundation tar oIitical sovereignty. Biopolitical commitments to “let die” by abandoning citizens appear increasingly credible in light of the growing authoritarianism in the United States under the Bush administration (Giroux 2005). Given the Bush administration’s use of illegal wiretaps, the holding of “detainees” illegally and indefinitely in prisons such as Guantanamo, the disappearance, kidnapping, and torture of alleged terrorists, and the ongoing suspension of civil liberties in the United States, Agamben’s theory of biopolitics rightly alerts us to the dangers of a government in which the state of emergency becomes the fundamental structure of control over populations While Agamben’s claim that the concentration camp (as opposed to Foucault’s panopticon) is now the model for constitutional states captures the contrariness of biopolitical commitments that have less to do with preserving life than with reproducing violence and death, its totalitarian logic is too narrow and fails in the end to recognize that the threat of violence, bare life, and death is not the only form of biopower in contemporary life The dialectics of life and death, visibility and invisibi and privilege and lack in social existence that now constitute the biopolitics of modernity have to be understood in terms of their complexities. speciuicities. and diverse social formations. For instance, the diverse ways in which the current articulation of biopower in the United States works to render some groups disposable and to privilege others within a permanent state of emergency need to be specified Indeed, any viable rendering of contemporary biopolitics must address more specifically how biopower attempts not just to produce and control ife in general, as Hardt and Negri insist, or to reduce all inhabitants of the increasing militarized state to the dystopian space of the death camp,” as Agamben argues, but also to privilege some lives over others. The ongoing tragedy of pain and suffering wrought by the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina reveals a biopolitical agenda in which the logic of disposability and the politics of death are inscribed differently in the order of contemporary power-structured largely around wretched and broad-based racial and class inequalities I want to further this position by arguing that neoliberalism, privatizalion and militarism have become the dominant bio of the mid-twent social state and that the coupling of a market funcIamenta and contemporary forms of sub of life to the power of capital accumulation, violence, and disposability especially under the Bush adrninistr has produced a new and dangerous version of. biopolitics.4 While the murder of EmrnettTill suggests that a biopolitics structured around the inter section of race and class inequalities, on the one hand, and state violence, on the other, has long existed, the new version of biopolitics adds a distinctively different and mere dangerous register. The new biopolitics not only includes state-sanctioned violence but also relegates entire populations to spaces of invisibility and disposability As William Diffazio points out, “the state has been so we over decades of privatization that it increasingly fails to provide health care, housing, retirement benefits and education to a massive percentage of its population’ (2006, 87). While the social contract has been suspended in varying degrees since the 1970s, under the Bush Administration it has been virtually abandoned. Under such, circumstances, the state no longer feels obligated to take measures that prevent hardship, suffering, and death. The state no longer protects its own disadvantaged citizens-they are already seen as dead within a transnational economic and political framework. Specific populations now occupy a globalized space of ruthless çoiitics in which the categories of ‘citizen’ and ‘democratic representation,’ once integral to national politics, are no longer recognized. In the past, people who were marginalized by class and race could at least expect a modicum of support from the government, either because of the persistence of a drastically reduced social contract or because they still had some value as part of a reserve army of unemployed labour. That is no longer true. This new form of biopolitics is conditioned by a permanent state of class and racial exceDtion in which “ populations are subiect to conditions of life confercing upon them the status of living dead (Mbembe 2003, 40), largely invisible in the global media, or when disruptively rwesent, defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous. Within this wasteland of death and disposability, whole populations are relegated to what Zygniunt Baurnan calls ‘social homelessness” (2004, 13). While the rich and middie classes in the United States maintain lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic and material capital, the “free market” provides neither social protection and security nor hope to those who are poor, sick, elderly, and margirialized by race and class. Given the increasing perilous state of the those who are poor and dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine how biopower functions within global neoliberalism and the simultaneous rise of security states organized around cultural (and racial) homogeneity. This task is made all the more urgent by’ the destruction, politics, and death that followed Hurricane Katrina.

Contention Three is Free Speech The Gag Rule Violates Rights to Free Speech Internationally Human Rights Magazine, Prisci Smith is the acting director of CRLP’s Domestic Program and an attorneyfor paintiffs in CRLP v. Bush. She graduated from Yale Law School in 1991. Kathy Hall Martinez a plaintiff in CR19 v. Bush, is acting director of CRLP’s International Program and a 1992 graduate of Columbia University School of Law, Izili Macis an international legal fellow at CRLP and received her J.D. and M.A. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University Law Center in 2000, Summer 2002, http:// rnrner The global gag rule is a violation of U constitutional and international human rights DrinciDles that include the rights to free speech and democratic participation. It violates the constitutional rights of U.S.-based NGOS such as CRLP and its lawyers, hampering their ability to effectively collaborate and freely exchange information with organizations abroad it also is nconsistent with U.S. foreign policy objectives and severely harms women’s reproductive heafth. United States development assistance has sought to encourage the building of civil societies, the free exchange of ideas, and women’s participation as equals. The U.S. government cannot have it both ways—FNGOs and US.-based organizations like CRLP that support making abortion safe and legal should not have their rightto speak and advocate cut off by the U.S. government, while U.S.-funded FNGOs fighting to increase restrictions en abortion are free to speak openly. This misguided and hypocritical U.S. policy must be eliminated Free speech is critical to civil society, democracy and to avoiding authoritarianism. Center for Reproductive Rights, 2003 [ the Silence,” Center for Reproductive Rights, 2003.] Organized and peaceful expression is not only the cornerstone of any democracy, it isa universally recognized right. Freedom of speech is also a primary U.S. foreign policy goal: The development of civil society depends on freedom of expression and association USAID’s strategy assessment framework explains that Iree and independent media, freedom of expression, and freedom of association are particularly critical for a pluralistic civil society and for democracy. In authoritarian or transitional regimes where at least some associational life is permitted, the political establishment often tries to gain control over civil society or, failing that, to limit the freedom of expression and association upon which it depends.”13 The ability to access and publicize information is a fundamental need ot a politicaIy active civil society.

Democracy decreases oppression, famine, war and migration while boosting economic growth Strat times 1-14-2000

Contention Four is Reproductive Right: Reproductive health care in Kenya is undermined by patriarchal social norms. Women lack control over decisions that shape their lives and affect their bodies. 

V The Gag Rule Destroys Women’s Rights In Order to Push An Anti-Abortion Agenda Berta Esperanra Hernandez—Truyol Levin, Mabie, & levin Professor of law, University of Florida Fredrir 6. levin School of Law, “Family Planning and AIDS Policy in the Internat Community On Disposable People and Human Well-Being: Health, Money, and Power,’ 13 UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 35, Fall 2006. S this work suggests a paradigmatic shift in the way governments, health care and related institutions, and civil society evaluate, offer, and deliver health care services. It urges that, rather than continue with the current econometric service-delivery version that treats statistically fragile thea!th-wise) patients as disposable people, we embrace a worldwide modeL of health delivery that pursues a human rights vision by centering humac dignitary and weU-being concerns. The paper utifizes the exaniples of the Global Gag Rule and HIVIA to promote the concept that health care is a critical component in the protection of humanity and human flourishing. Part II presents historic& writings which show that, even before the advent of the discipline we call human rights, health was viewed as a fundamental right of t It then maps some key egal documents that designate and protect hea’th as a human right. These documents provide the bluepdnt for claiming a rigtit to human welt-being to which a right to health (as well as other human rights) is central. Next, Part Ill specificafly focuses on the Global Gag Rule, a draconian policy deployed by the United States during President Reagan’s administration In furtherance of ts ideological support of strategies that lend a blind protection to unborn life. Such protection becomes the singular goa’ regard’ess of any other costs the pohcy may engender, inchidine the physical or n1enta endangerment to women of unwanted pregnancy, and thus rendering them and their needs disposable. These disposable people are principally pregnant women, but also include members of their families and of their communities. The Reagan policy - formally known as the Mexico City Policy - prohibits financial assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to any groups or entities that perform, promote, or even provide counseling on abortion. United States’ court decisions have uph&d the constitutionality of the gag ru on speech and association [ grounds. However, the courts analytical framework seems at worst misp’aced and at best incomplete as it focuses on protecting narrow ‘rights but ignores broader critical concerns, including the physicai and rnenta! health of the pregnant woman. These concerns 5hould include the consequences of the pregnancy on the individual woman, her family, and her community - all those who are involved in a realistic and holistic analysis of the medical decision. The policy fails to consider the human e!ement involved in makhig such a difficult, complex decision as the termination of a pregnancy as well as the disruptions ft causes. Rather than pursue a health and well-being goal, the policy simply deploys the politkal and financial - indeed imperial - power of a rich and powerful governnlentto promote its anti-abortion stance. Part IV focuses on NIV/AIDS. First, the article sets forth the circumstances surrounding the HlV/AIDS pandemic. Second, it shows the unfortunate and unintended consequences of the gag rule on HIV/AIDS services and treatments. Due to its ideologica undecpinn(ngs, the p causes disruptions beyond denying funding for the policy’s expressly targeted acti’iities. These two realities provide the groundwork to pursue a paradigmatic shift in health care delivery at a broader level. The reality of the HI V/AIDS epidemic and the success of modern treatments serve to break down the prevailing curative/pafliative dichotomy. Instead, they suggest that a continuum - from preventive to curative - exists with regard to treatment of illnesses. Health care needs occur within such a continuum and persons, in pursuit c human well regardless of their location on the health [ continuum or of their economic abiUty to access health care services, shou’d be entitled to health care protections and solutions. This work, by centering human well-being, provides a framework to critique the prevailing discourse of economic abil to access, health care that not only distorts but a’so undermines the human dimensions of health care policies.

Patriarchal underpinnings of reproductive health reaffirms gender inequality James Gathii, exporting culture wars, fall 06

Contention Five is Solvency Our Solvency Is Linear—Studies Prove People WiU Use All Contraception AvaFlable JOHN B. CASTERLINE Senior Research Associate in the Policy Research Division at the Population Council in New York, and STEVEN W. SINDING Director of Population Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, 12/00, Population and Development Review. - I EQually revealing are the qualitative interviews conducted as part of the same set of in-depth studies. One line of Questioning common to these studies was to ask women and men about their fertility preferences and their success in implementingthem in effect probing into their self-perception of unmet need for more effective fertility regulation. In all settings it is clearthat many women and men feel frustrated by their inability to adopt behaviors that would effectively prevent unintended pregnancies Some individuals articulate the obstacles (deficiencies in the seMce environment, social barriers and so fcrth) to implementing their preferences in fertility-regulation behavior, while others express only vague frustration that easily slips into resignation. Whether or not obstacles are identified, the transcripts from these qualitative interviews leave the reader with a sense of individuals’ dissatisfaction with their ability to regulate their fertility Furthermore, a willingness to rely on induced abortior, instead of contraception, as a means of preventing unintended births is not expressed commonly in any of these settings It is not possible from these studies to determine whatfraction of women classified as having unmet need for contraception perceive themselves to be in that condition, b the cumulative impression is that it is a majority, not a minority, of such women. The argument that unmet need is entirely a fiction devised by the s analyst is effectively refuted bythis Qualitative research The United States Must Forward A New, Pro-Women’s Rights Foreign Policy Now in Order to Solve Women’s Rights Around the Globe Julia L. Ernst Laura Katzive, and Erica Smock University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Volunie 6, Number 4, April2004. As discussed in previous sections, although the global trend is a movement toward increasing human rights for women, including reproductive rights, there is a small but growing countertrend bent on dismantling these rights. This international countercurrent has been significantly strengthened by the reinvigorated anti-choice agenda espoused by the current U.S. government—not only through its foreign policy agenda, but also through international exposure of the assaults on abortion rights in the U.S.’ Therefore, in addition to the direct impact of U.S. foreign policy restrictions) such as the global gag rule, the Bush administration high profile condemnation of abortion in its domestic policy and positions taken at international fora may also be having an effect on national-level campaigns to liberalize abortion in countries where it is illegal. The United States government has given ammunition to conservative forces in other countries who couch opposition to abortion in moral—and even misguided health-related—terms based upon their interpretation of U.S. abortion policies. For example) in Mali, a women’s rights activist spoke of a common assumption that if the United States takes a position on an issue, it has done so following evaluation of concrete, scientific evidence.’ In addition, the ljnfted States’ willingness to withhold funding as punishment for support—or perceived support—of abortion has led to a fear in some countries that abortion law reform may result in a loss of U.S. financial assistance. For example, prior to the liberalization of abortion in Nepal, there were fears among those aware of the de-funding of LJNFPA that abortion law reform would lead to a similar reprisal against the government of Nepal While these fears ultimately did not prevent reform in that country, they may have a more significant chilling effect in other countries. The Bush administration and anti-choice members of Congress have ignored the fact that women’s rights advocates In every nation where abortion remains restricted continue to fight for safe, legal abortion because they see it—as the majority of women in the U.S. do—as integral to their ability to control their fertility, preserve their health and well-being, and participate as equals in their sDcieties. Women in these countries want what women in the U.S. have come to take for granted—access to safe abortion services as part of their reproductive health care. In response, the Bush administration is joining forces with its fundamentalist counterparts at the United Nations and in regional venues, thereby giving strengthto emerging far right religious movements worldwide. The US, government’s renewed fundamentalism raises questions about further consequences, especially when considered in the context of women’s struggles to achieve fulfillment of their broader reproductive rights. For example, is the fundamentalism and traditionalis that the United States exports to other countries

helping to foster the climate in which the Vatican launches a campaigp against life-saving condoms in the midst ala worldwide HlV/AIDS crisis?196 In which the government of Iran can conternplate.promoting “temporary marriages to allow nien to purchase the sexual services of women—who are often young and forced into prostitution by abusive families or husbands, a practice defended as permissible under the Shute branch of lslarr?197 In which pregnant woman needing emergency obstetric care in Afghanistan are still inhibited from seeing a doctor by religious clerics stating that their situation is “Allah’s wiU’?’ According to a press release from the Alan Guttriacher Institute concerning the Bush administration’s string of anti-choice Initiatives, “the Bush administration has sided with the Vatican, as well as ‘axis olevil’ countries Iran and Iraq and others not known for their support of women’s rights, including Libya, Sudan and Syria.” The press release quoted Adrienne Gerrnain, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, as stating that [ alliance shows the depths of perversity of the Iu•s•] position. On the one hand were presumably blaming these countries for unspeakable acts of terrorism, and at the same time we are aIIy ourselves with them in the oppression of wornen.’ZOO As noted in the conclusion, prochoice policy makers must vocally oppose all forms of reproductive rights abuses against women, which are exacerbated globally by the United States through what has been described as President Bush’s ‘war against women.’ Conclusion In 1973, Roe v. Wade contributed to an emerging global understanding of women’s reproductive autonomy as a basic human right. Today, in contrast, the global pro-choice movement is working to counter U.S policies that deny women needed reproductive health care services. It should be increasingly clearto women in the US- that their own reproductive rights are not invulnerable. For this reason, and because pro-choice advocates overseas have little powerto influence the decisionsof American politicians, attacks on reproductive rights abroad should engender resistance and protestat home. Likewise, pro-choice policy makers in the I.J.S, need to connect the dots among the assaults on choice by the Bush administration, Congress and the federal judiciary. While each of these initiatives carries implications for the women directly affected by it, its threat to basic freedoms for the larger pro-choice public might not be immediately evident. This “divide-and- conquer” tactic incrementally takes away access to abortion from discrete groups in the U.S. and abroad, while seemingly leaving a skeleton of the “right to choose’ in place. When regarded together, as a unified, coordinated plan to dismantle the protections afforded women by the U.S. Constitution and human rights instruments, these ind steps paint a more ominous picture. Piecemeal attempts to slow these anti-choice assaults have met with uneven success, Pro-choice policy makers in the U.S. need to respond to their opponents in kind, by presenting an alternative, comprehensive, positive vision of womenks reproductive rights and health, ncluding not only access to safe and.legal abortion, but also to comprehensive reproductive health care services education, and information. History has shown that? for better or forworse, the US, can have tremendous influence on the reproductive rights, health, and well-being of millions of women across the globe. Now it is time for U.S. leaders to listen to voices of women worldwide who know far too well what it means to live without choice. The rights of all women may depend on it.