Policy Priorities

Population Connection works with our sister organization, Population Connection Action Fund, to expand access to safe, affordable, and comprehensive reproductive health care worldwide by:

• Engaging people across the country to take action against the Global Gag Rule and to put pressure on members of Congress to support the bill to permanently repeal it, the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (HER) Act
• Urging Congress to repeal the Helms Amendment through the Abortion Is Health Care Everywhere Act
• Demanding increased funding for international family planning and reproductive health programs to ensure that every individual seeking care can make their own health care decisions—without exceptions
• Fighting against the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade by pushing for the passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA)

The Global Gag Rule penalizes foreign health care providers that provide a full range of information and services that are legal within their own countries. It stifles democratic participation by prohibiting assistance to organizations that speak out about the impact of unsafe abortion in their own countries. The Helms Amendment has been used to ban foreign assistance from funding abortion services under any circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person. It is simply impossible to have a serious discussion about reproductive health and maternal mortality in the developing world without discussing the importance of safe abortion access. The Global Gag Rule and the Helms Amendment are two of the most odious policies ever enacted on foreign assistance funding—they erode access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion—and it is time for both policies to end, permanently.

And here in the United States, abortion is no longer protected by the Constitution, since the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, 2022.