Bush's 'Relationship' To Reproductive Health, Sex Education 'Consistently Abysmal,' Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs;  Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 23 Jul 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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The Bush administration's "relationship" with reproductive health and sex education has been "consistently abysmal" both domestically and globally, and is one of many reasons why the "Bushies can't leave office fast enough," Sarah Wildman, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, writes in a Guardian opinion piece.

According to Wildman, the Bush administration "has time and again" put women's lives "second to a religiously inspired relationship to women and reproductive health." This includes the administration's recently proposed regulation that allegedly seeks to allow medical providers to refuse patients access to commonly used contraceptive methods as a matter of conscience on the grounds that they are a form of abortion, according to Wildman. She noted that such a regulation is the "kind of pre-emptive contraceptive measur[e] that pro-life forces should love."

Wildman added that Bush's commitment to "foolish" abstinence-only education worldwide has "been coupled with a slavish devotion to the restrictive, ghoulish, 'global gag rule,'" also known as the Mexico City policy. The rule -- which was instituted by former President Reagan in 1984, repealed by former President Clinton and reinstated by Bush -- bars U.S. funding to foreign nongovernmental organizations that, with non-U.S. funds, provide or pay for abortion services or counseling, or engage in advocacy on abortion-related issues, according to Wildman. The 1973 Helms Amendment already bans U.S. funds from paying for abortions abroad, but the global gag rule goes further by forcing health care providers to choose between losing "crucial American funding" or "severely limit[ing] the way they tal[k] about reproductive choice," Wildman writes. The global gag rule did not "just gag" providers on the issue of abortion, it impacted birth control and education as well, Wildman writes, noting that under the Bush administration, USAID has ended shipments of contraceptives to 16 developing countries in Africa and Asia as a "direct consequence of the gag rule." She says that "[i]nstead of ending abortions, the global gag rule pushed women into back alleys and undermined, even closed, organizations that would have counseled women on how not to get pregnant in the first place."

The Bush administration also has withheld about $39.7 million annually since 2002 from the United Nations Population Fund, "claiming -- despite evidence to the contrary -- that UNFPA is connected to forced abortions in China," Wildman writes, adding that the "shortfall" in funds also has undermined access to contraception and education worldwide, specifically in Africa. The Bush administration's "notion of contraception and sex education has been consistently -- maddeningly -- oxymoronic" because abortion rates are "lowest in countries where women have access to education, especially education on contraception," Wildman writes.

Wildman notes that a recent World Bank report found 51 million unintended pregnancies occur each year in developing countries; another 25 million pregnancies occur because women's contraception fails or they use it incorrectly; and 68,000 women die and 5.1 million women become permanently disabled annually because of unsafe and botched abortions. She concludes, "So while we in the U.S. hold our collective breath, waiting out these last few months of Bush's efforts to restrict our freedoms, globally women are literally dying for him to leave" (Wildman, Guardian, 7/21).

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