Setting Forth the Congressional Budget for the United States Government

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, my colleague from Utah tells a nice story, but it is not accurate. He is not being honest about what is going on with the global gag rule, and I am really disappointed that he is once again trying to push this dangerous legislation.

In fact, instead of protecting life, the global gag rule erects new barriers to critical health services, including reproductive health services for people and communities that already have limited access to affordable, quality healthcare.

And let's be clear: America's taxpayer dollars do not go to fund abortions overseas.

What my colleague is objecting to is funding for family planning services to help women protect their families. And the policy that he wants to codify into law is dangerous in the best of times, but during a global pandemic, when care is already stretched, it is downright deadly.

The Guttmacher Institute estimates that a 10-percent--just a 10- percent decline in family planning services, including reduced access to reversible contraception and pregnancy and newborn healthcare, results in 49 million more women with unmet contraceptive needs; 15 million additional unintended pregnancies; 1.7 million women and 2.6 million newborns who will experience major complications due to not receiving the care they need; and most unfortunate and sad, 28,000 more maternal deaths and 168,000 more newborn deaths because of this policy. And that is just a modest 10-percent reduction in family planning access.

So if you really care about families and newborns, you will ensure that they have access to the critical services that they need so they don't have those unintended pregnancies.

It is safe to say that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has diverted care and shut down access to family planning clinics across the globe, is greatly exacerbating the situation. So now is not the time to place draconian limits on family planning dollars.

In fact, we need a renewed commitment to comprehensive family planning. That is why last week, along with 47 of our colleagues, we reintroduced the bipartisan Global Health Empowerment and Rights Act. The bill, also known as Global HER, would ensure that care is not limited based on the President in the White House because if we are going to actually get serious about improving the lives of women and girls, we should be working to end the global gag rule, not to expand it.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, again, I would just like to correct what my colleague is saying. We do not use foreign aid money to perform abortions overseas. In fact, a poll conducted by CHANGE, Center for Health and Gender Equity, demonstrates that 59 percent of likely voters--if we want to talk about polls--59 percent of likely voters in America oppose banning U.S. global health assistance going to organizations in other countries that provide legal and safe abortions or abortion referrals. Only 30 percent support this policy.

Research published in the Lancet medical journal last July found that the global gag rule under President George W. Bush--which was implemented on an exponentially smaller scale than what was done by President Trump and what is proposed in the law that my colleague from Utah is asking for unanimous consent to put forward, that kind of reduction in access to services increases a country's typical abortion rate by 40 percent while reducing the use of modern contraceptives by 3.5 percent.

See, this is what happens when you don't base policy decisions on scientific data. You get these kinds of narratives that are absolutely inaccurate. What we know and what is repeatedly evident through the research is that the global gag rule or, as my colleague calls it, protecting life in global health assistance, actually increases abortions.

It is, unfortunately, simple logic. Decreasing access to family planning methods like modern contraception, counseling, and the health spacing and timing of pregnancies, directly leads to more unwanted pregnancies. But because this policy also limits abortion services that organizations provide with other non-U.S. funds, women with unwanted pregnancies are forced to seek out unsafe abortions. That is why we see the abortion numbers increase. So it is a lose-lose policy, and, of course, it is women and children who pay the price.

The Foundation for AIDS Research found that one-third of 286 PEPFAR Programs implementing partners who were surveyed had altered their services or organizational operations in response to the global gag rule under former President Trump--a great program, PEPFAR, under George W. Bush, that has saved millions of lives, and yet what we saw under the Trump implementation of the global gag rule is that they had to alter the services that they provided, including reducing sexual and reproductive health and pregnancy counseling, youth outreach, contraception services, and HIV counseling, testing, and treatment.

The policies that my colleague is advocating for makes the situation worse for women and families, and if he would look at the scientific data, he would understand that.

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