International Women's Day

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about International Women's Day, which was yesterday, March 8. The theme this year is ``women in decisionmaking.'' As I contemplated the meaning of this, I thought about how important it is for women to be involved in the decisionmaking about their own bodies.

And in this vein I would like to talk about the global gag rule.

When President Bush took office in 2001, he signed an Executive order known as the global gag rule. It denies U.S. funds to any overseas health clinic unless it agrees not to participate in any activities related to abortion services. Those activities include: providing legal abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or where the woman's life is endangered; and offering advice and information regarding the availability and benefits of abortion and providing referrals for abortion services.

The global gag rule denies U.S. funds even if the overseas health clinic is using its own privately raised funds for these services. What that means is that if you are a medical professional living in an impoverished country trying to help people and save their lives, you are gagged from even talking about certain reproductive health services. The gag rule places limits on women and doctors that we have deemed unacceptable here in the United States.

Last year, the Senate passed an amendment to the Foreign Affairs Authorization Act to reverse the President's policy and ensure that health care clinics for women and families receive this much needed funding. Unfortunately, this legislation has not been passed by the full Senate. The Foreign Operations Appropriations bill last year contained $34 million for the United Nations Population Fund, UNPA, for this purpose. But in order to ensure that this money goes toward funding health care clinics for women and families in poor countries, we must overturn this global gag rule.

In many poor countries around the world, nongovernmental organizations and medical professionals are working to make things better. They have set up clinics and reached out to the women and families in poor communities. They are doing great work. But their hands are tied, because the Bush administration has imposed a political ideology on the world.

Overturning the global gag rule is about safe access to health care for women. Hundreds of thousands of women are dying each year from complications from pregnancy. These women do not have access to the health care that they need, especially reproductive health care. I will continue to speak out about the importance of providing safe access to health care for women all over the globe until this dangerous policy is lifted.

http://thomas.loc.gov/