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Permanently Ending the Global Gag Rule

What is the Global Gag Rule?

Since 1984, the rights and welfare of women in developing countries have been dependent on who is sitting in the White House. That’s when a cruel policy was first imposed on international family planning assistance under the false pretense that it would reduce abortion overseas. The Global Gag Rule, when it is in place, bans U.S. global health aid for foreign NGOs that provide, refer for, or counsel on abortion, even when they do so with their own non-U.S. funding. The Global Gag Rule has been imposed via executive action by every Republican president since Ronald Reagan, and repealed by every Democratic one.

The Global Gag Rule disqualifies some of the most effective and experienced family planning providers in the world from receiving U.S. assistance. Whether the policy is in effect is a matter of life and death for women around the world. Lack of access to family planning information and services puts the lives and health of women at risk for no defensible reason. An estimated 287,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes every year, almost all of them in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Of these deaths, 22,800–31,000 are due to unsafe abortion.

How would the Global HER Act end the Global Gag Rule?

The Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (HER) Act (H.R.1838, S.1098) would end this deadly policy by barring any future presidential administration from unilaterally imposing the Global Gag Rule. Passage of this legislation is critical to ensuring the stability of family planning programs; however, despite being introduced in each session of Congress since 2017, there hasn’t been a vote in either the House or the Senate.

Repealing the Helms Amendment

What is the Helms Amendment?

Since 1973, the Helms Amendment has prohibited the use of U.S. foreign assistance for abortion overseas. The law specifically bars the use of U.S. foreign aid for “abortion as a method of family planning,” but the U.S. government has always treated the amendment as a blanket ban on funding abortion for any reason, even in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the pregnant person’s life. Making abortion inaccessible or unaffordable doesn’t prevent people from having abortions — it prevents people from having safe abortions. As mentioned in the section about the Global Gag Rule, an estimated 22,800–31,000 women die each year from the consequences of unsafe abortion, either because the provider is inexperienced, because the conditions are unsanitary or otherwise unsafe, or both.

It’s time to repeal Helms once and for all. It has no benefit to foreign policy, to global health, to international relations, or, really to anything at all. It is, in fact, simply a relic of domestic abortion politics from a half-century ago. And the domestic politics of abortion are totally divorced from the reality women struggling with unwanted or non-viable pregnancies in the developing world face.

How would the Abortion Is Health Care Everywhere Act end the Helms Amendment?

The Abortion Is Health Care Everywhere Act (H.R.1723, S.929) would repeal the Helms Amendment by removing it from the Foreign Assistance Act where it has remained for over 50 years. When the bill was first introduced in 2021, it was the first time legislation had been proposed that would end the Helms Amendment. There are versions of the bill in both the House and the Senate, but neither has ever received a vote.

Increasing International Family Planning Assistance

What is the current U.S. investment in international family planning programs?

The family planning assistance that the U.S. budgets each year is distributed via two channels: multilateral aid through contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and bilateral aid through grants made to foreign NGOs by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

United States funding for international family planning and reproductive health has been stagnant at $607.5 million for 14 years, and is now 45% below the 1995 level (in constant dollars). Since then, the number of women of reproductive age in the developing world has grown by over 540 million.

Each year, there are approximately 111 million unintended pregnancies in the developing world which result in 30 million unwanted births. These unintended pregnancies are largely a result of a high level of unmet need for family planning — an estimated 218 million women in low- and middle-income countries want to prevent or delay pregnancy but aren’t using modern contraception.

How much should the U.S. invest in international family planning programs?

The U.S. and other donor countries pledged to fund one-third of the amount needed to address the demand for family planning services (currently estimated at $12.6 billion). Based on the gross national income (GNI) of each donor country, the U.S. share of the total cost is $1.74 billion. This is the amount that we press Congress for each year during the budgeting process, specifying that $116 million should be carved out for UNFPA. Instead of the budget including the amount requested, it has felt like a victory to keep the level from dropping each year in the face of attempts by right-wing extremists to reduce or even zero out family planning funding.

Consistently Supporting UNFPA

What is UNFPA?

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is an essential agency that provides people in more than 150 countries around the globe with desperately-needed reproductive and maternal health services, including family planning, safe delivery supplies, and treatment of obstetric fistula. Programs also work to prevent child marriage, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation, and sex-selective abortion and infanticide.

UNFPA is often the first agency on the ground after a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis. Health workers set up ad hoc clinics and deploy mobile units to reach people in refugee camps and other temporary shelters with family planning, safe delivery services, menstrual dignity kits, and clinical management of STIs and rape (which is unfortunately widespread in crisis settings).

UNFPA is a cost-effective service provider that reaches millions of people around the world with critical health care—the agency saves lives and supports our broader diplomatic, development, and national security priorities.

Why does UNFPA need protection?

Unfortunately, every Republican president since 1985 has eliminated funding for UNFPA due to a bogus claim that the agency participates in coercive population control in China. Independent investigative teams have traveled to China to evaluate UNFPA programs there and have that all of them are voluntary and grounded in human rights.

A bill called the Support UNFPA Funding Act (H.R.4166) has been introduced in the House of Representatives during the last two sessions of Congress, but it has never received a vote. A Senate companion bill has never been introduce.

Protecting Reproductive Rights in the U.S.

Post-Roe abortion bans plague states

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, ending the federal right to abortion, which applied to all pregnancies up to the point of fetal viability. Abortion laws are now determined by individual states, with rights and access differing widely. As of September 2024, there are 14 states that have total bans, another 11 states that ban abortion at various points before fetal viability, and 16 states that ban abortion between 24 and 26 weeks of gestation. Only nine states and DC have no gestational limits to obtaining an abortion. For the most up-to-date information on state abortion policies, visit the Guttmacher Institute.

There is a bill in both houses of Congress that would reinstate the nationwide right to abortion, the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) (H.R.12, S.701). The House of Representatives passed two earlier versions of the bill, in 2021 and 2022, but the bill hasn’t made it past the filibuster to a floor in the Senate.

Contraceptive security at stake

One would imagine that the most anti-abortion elected officials would also be the most pro-contraception. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Comments made by certain presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, and members of Congress call into question the security of the right of Americans to obtain and use modern contraceptives.

The Right to Contraception Act (H.R.4121, S.4381) would establish the statutory right of medical providers to prescribe and distribute contraceptives to patients and the right of patients to use contraception. The Senate failed to pass a motion to move the bill to the floor for a vote this year, and the House bill is still in committee.