The Global Gag Rule: An Antithesis to the Rights-Based Approach to Health

Abstract

F amily planning assistance in the US has directly advanced, supported, and helped to build the infrastructure of family planning services in over 50 countries around the world since 1965. Family planning funds, channelled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have allowed women and families around the world to improve their quality of life.2 Tragically, in recent years, it has become harder for USAID to achieve successes in family planning. Restrictions placed on US family planning funds have created lasting damage to family planning programs around the world that rely on US support. On his first day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush reinstated a controversial policy (first instituted by the Reagan Administration in 1984) that infringes on the rights to health and life of women living in developing countries.3 The policy in question, officially known as the Mexico City Policy,