On Wednesday I attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the effect of the Global Gag Rule. It felt like a slightly inopportune time, as Bush recently vetoed promised to veto legislation repealing the policy, which denies U.S. AID funding to any NGO that so much as discusses abortion. But as long as this policy is in place, it's vital to keep talking about it's effects.
NARAL Pro-Choice America excitedly announced it as the "first fair-minded House hearing on reproductive health in 12 years." In his opening remarks, Chairman Tom Lantos explained, "By gagging the world’s most effective reproductive health care organizations, the President is hoping to reduce the rate of abortion. But that is not happening. The Global Gag Rule is just making abortion more unsafe." Three of the four witnesses were there to testify as to the disastrous effect the Gag Rule has had on women in the developing world.
So why, then, did the atmosphere feel more like a crisis-pregnancy center than a pro-choice hearing? Maybe because, frustratingly, 18 of the 20 committee members with a 100-percent rating from NARAL didn't bother to show up and speak out against the Gag Rule. Most of the members who took time to attend the hearing were anti-choice Republicans who support Bush's policy of denying women and girls in developing nations access to family planning resources. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen lauded the Gag Rule as an effort to "protect the human rights of all." Rep. Steve Chabot told the committee that his birthday is the day Roe v. Wade was decided, so the Gag Rule issue hits him especially hard. (Not as hard as it hits women in Africa, I'd wager…) Rep. Donald Manzullo talked about the crisis-pregnancy center he and his wife opened in his home district in Illinois. And Rep. Chris Smith went so far as to put ultrasound images up on the screens on either end of the room and draw our attention to "the child kicking, catapulting in the womb." It was all I could do to keep from retching.
So I was relieved to finally hear from Rep. Nita Lowey, who isn't on the committee but attended the hearing at Lantos's request. She declared that the Global Gag Rule "has no place in our foreign policy," and went on to describe the huge unmet need for contraception in developing nations -- and how increased family planning funding would actually reduce abortions. "I do consider myself pro-life," she stated, for the benefit of the members of Congress who are pro-fetal-life only.
She was followed by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who made a point of first recognizing "our dear former colleague Henry Hyde" -- who is largely responsible for denying reproductive health care to poor women in the U.S. She then thanked Smith for showing the ultrasound photos, and actually started crying, testifying through her overwrought tears that the Gag Rule is a "pro-family policy protecting women and their children."
But her theatrics -- and the anecdotes from the anti-choice committee members -- didn't succeeded in overshadowing the testimony of witnesses called to relate how the Gag Rule has affected women and girls around the world. Duff Gillespie, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, testified that, if the goal of the Global Gag Rule was to reduce abortions in developing nations, the policy has been a dismal failure. Then Ejike Oji, country director of Ipas Nigeria, told the committee that, when his cousin died due to complications from abortion in the 1970s, he never thought that decades later women would still be dying this way. And Joanna Nerquaye-Tetteh, who was executive director of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana from 1995-2006, described how her organization (which provides family planning services, immunizations, HIV/AIDS care, and pre- and post-natal care -- but not abortion) wrestled with the decision to either lose a significant portion of their funding, or deny women services and information. They chose to reject U.S. funding altogether rather than accept the restrictions. Nerquaye-Tetteh testified,
"It seemed to us that the Global Gag Rule was playing politics with women's lives. We found it morally offensive and totally at odds with our mission and medical ethics to risk the lives of Ghanaian women because of domestic politics in another country."
As a result of rejecting the Gag Rule, the organization had to lay off half of its clinic staff. They immediately started experiencing contraceptive shortages, and there was a 40 percent drop in condom distribution. In the year after they turned down the U.S. restricted funding, they saw 50 percent more women for post-abortion care.
The witness called by anti-choice members of the committee, Jean Kagia, is chair of the Protecting Life Movement in Kenya. She asserted that the Gag Rule hasn't really been all that bad for Kenyan women, because the government provides 60 percent of services for free. (Somehow, I don't have that much faith in the Kenyan health care system.) The kicker? When asked during the question-and-answer period about why U.S. aid dollars should not be spent on family planning organizations that provide abortion referrals in the developing world, Kagia responded that "African women love babies." Just... wow.
Sadly, because most of the committee members to show up were anti-choicers, the majority of questions were directed to Kagia. (In fairness, I did have to leave a bit early, so I may have missed a few good pro-choice questions.) It's frustrating. Yes, of course I was happy to see the House holding hearings on this incredibly important issue. But members of Congress shouldn't just earn a pro-choice reputation by casting votes against abortion restrictions. Turning up for hearings like this is really important. Because, unfortunately, without pro-choice committee members there to question them, witnesses with stories about the devastating effects of the Global Gag Rule didn't receive as much time to talk as they should have. One of the purposes of this hearing was to make Congress listen to people directly affected by the policy -- and confront the fact that this is not just a domestic ideological battle, women are dying as a result of this rule.
So while I think it was great that Lantos convened the hearing (and wonderful that Rep. Diane Watson asked some pointed pro-choice questions), I really really wish more committee members had showed up, asked some good questions, and lived up to their 100-percent pro-choice rating.
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Which is why we shouldn’t provide them reproductive healthcare. Yes, that’s the argument made by the leader of the anti-choice organization Protecting Life in Kenya. Ann has the whole story — the comment was made during Congressional ... Read More
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I was disapponted that nine-tenths of the pro-choice members of this committee didn't show up. Hopefully, we will get much better pro-choice turnout if the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decides to conduct a hearing on the atrocious Global Gag Rule.
Just for conducting this hearing, Lantos was named by me as one of the three Best People of the Week. I also named Feministing's own Jessica as Best Person of the Week. Here it is:
http://aikenareaprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/11/people-of-week-for-november-3.html
The fact that so many pro-choice committee members failed to show up really makes me mad. It almost makes you think they don't really care about the lives and safety of the poverty stricken women in the third world--they aren't here casting votes or donating money. Offering these women access to all of the available family planning information is of critical importance--and failure to do so is nothing short of obscenely inhumane.
Ugh. This was depressing.
And did Bush actually veto the bill? I mean, I know that he will, but I missed him actually doing it. For some reason I thought that the bill was still in committee back at the house (because the bill that repealed the gag rule entirely was an updated version written by the Senate) . . .
My Representative isn't on that committee. But if he was and didn't show up, I'd contact him and give him a piece of my mind.
During the South Dakota abortion ban hype, the PEW Research Center did a survey about whether people support a similar nationwide ban. 58% of respondens said that they would oppose such a ban. "Even those who express strong opposition to abortion restrictions don't see abortion as a critical issue facing the country, while those who strongly support abortion restrictions do. As a result, proponents of a national law modeled after South Dakota's are twice as likely to have donated money, written letters, or participated in activities related to the cause over the past year as are those who would oppose such a change." Pretty crazy.
Thanks for being there and blogging on this Ann.
Gah! Not only is the U.S already an empirical world force (its foreign policies don't provide much evidence against this observation, in all fairness), it's also well on its way to proving it to the global community. I appreciate that there are people in congress, whom are willing to speak up for the rights of people in developing countries (albeit, very few it would seem).
Rep. Musgrave has to be one of the most anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-liberty politicians I've seen in awhile (I can attest to this, having lived in Colorado for the past few years, canvassing against the "Defense of Marriage" act, which she was partially responsible for pioneering).
She actually shed a few tears huh? Great theatrics.
yeah. our glorious democracy in action, right? nothing like living in the belly of the beast to make you cynical as hell about it.
i try my hardest not to get totally hardened to the possibility of functional, uncorrupted government (ok, maybe not my hardest, but i try), but when you hear stories like this, you just despair a little about who's being represented and how.
thanks for blogging about it here, though - that's really something, considering!
Ann, I think Cara's right: Bush has promised to veto the approps bill that includes the gag repeal, but the conference committee hasn't sent him a final version yet. Still, it was a depressing show. The anti's were there the whole time, each asking several questions. The pro-choice side, however, just phoned it in. Even strong advocates like Joe Crowley (from Queens) and Barbara Lee (from Oakland) showed up to ask very good questions, but then they left.
(Yes, I watched most of it. Yes, I'm probably mentally ill -- and boy, was I in a crappy mood for the rest of the day!)
What you may have missed after you left that was totally inspiring was Duff Gillespie arguing with three antis at once about how the rule is badly implemented. They ganged up on him and he held his own.
Also, the Kenyan woman, Kagia? Apparently she is in private practice, for women who can afford private services, and has very little experience with the Kenyan public health system, or providing any kind of health services for poor women. All she has is her soapbox.
It's unfortunate that the level of enthusiasm for pro-choice positions is not inspiring. It feels like a checklist item when they vote the correct way but do little else.
Thanks for attending and pointing a spotlight, maybe additional pressure will encourage some of the members to make more of an effort to show up next time.
More than the tears, more than the declaration that all African women love babies, more than the damn ultrasound pics, I take bigger offense to Chabot's it's-hard-for-me-because-it's-my-birthday slap in the face. What a way trivialize a crisis.
How utterly depressing - and I mean all of it - Chabot, the crying, the impact, but most of all, the fact that people didn't think it was worth turning up for. We collected signatures for a petition for NARAL at school last week, and it hurts to think that other pro-choice people didn't care enough.
If there was any doubt about the impact of the global gag rule, read this report my law school published after visiting Kenya to see the impact of the rule on women's health. It's called Exporting Despair, which I think sums it up.
Thanks so much for posting on this, Ann. I was also at the Committee hearing and there were a couple of things that were also gag-inducing that you might have missed since you left early.
First, all I'm going to say about Congresswoman Musgrave is that I feel really sorry for a woman who can cry over an ultrasound video yet have no remorse about taking away the funding from women who are DYING worldwide as a result of their pregnancies.
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen made a comment to Congressman Payne about his technique leading the session stating, "...certainly it's the Chairman's right to comment after every member has his question and answer period. But, is that going to be what we're going to continue to be doing? And if so, I would like the opportunity to also comment...It's just that editorial comment with what you don't agree and I would like to have that comment, too." This sums up how rude the Republican Representatives were the entire session. From Rep Inglis pointing his pencil and shaking his finger at the witnesses like they were naughty pets who made a poo on the carpet to more than one occasion of a representative shrugging their shoulders and replying "close enough" when they pronounced one of the witnesses names wrong.
Also, you might have missed Rep Crowley (yay!) and his response to the "African women love their babies" comment. He replied that that probably wasn't a scientific poll and it could probably be true about women in the U.S., Asia or Europe. One of the few times I smiled during that session was when he said that, "I can also bet that women in Africa love themselves as well--and would probably like to live a little longer."
One of the more sickening parts of the hearing was listening to Rep Manzullo address the panel. You can only understand how pissed off the pro-choicers were if you listen to the tone in his voice while he spoke to the witnesses. I encourage everyone to take the time to listen to the hearing-especially the last 40 minutes. It will definitely induce your gag reflex.