THE BUSH administration, version 2.0, is full of interesting contradictions. George W. Bush lost the popular vote, but he ended up getting into office. He has said that one of the main American ideals is respect for the "infinite value of every life," but he sets records on the number of people he executes per year. He calls himself "a uniter, not a divider," and on just his third day in office he proceeds to trigger debate about the most divisive issue in American politics: abortion.
Fresh from his inauguration on Sunday, Bush sent people on both sides of the abortion issue into a tailspin this week when he issued an executive order that reinstated what is known as the "global gag rule." The rule declares that the United States will not fund international family planning organizations that provide abortions or information about abortion. It even prevents organizations such as women's health clinics and AIDS awareness groups from discussing abortion in any form. The rule originated in 1984 with the Reagan administration and was overturned by Bill Clinton in 1993.
To Bush's credit, reinstating the gag rule is a smart political move. It comforts pro-lifers who voted for him by reassuring them he's committed to the pro-life cause. It prevents liberals from getting too inflamed by ensuring that the action doesn't affect women in the U.S., only women abroad.
While it may be a smart political move, it isn't smart in any other sense. In fact, the action illustrates that the Bush administration is either unwilling or unable to think outside narrow conservative boundaries it has set up for itself and consider what the global gag rule means.
Primarily, the rule and its reinstatement means that the beliefs of a small minority of a single nation are imposed on the rest of the world. The Christian Right's insistence on forcing their values onto not only the rest of the country but also the rest of the world shows that they aren't interested in listening to what the majority of the people believe, much less making any concessions to those beliefs.
The fact is that the number of people who oppose all types of abortion in this country are far outnumbered by the number of people who are pro-choice and pro-family planning. The most recent and striking reminder of the people's feelings is that a majority of the American people voted for a pro-choice presidential candidate just two months ago. Furthermore, an exit poll in the presidential election found more voters favored keeping abortion legal, by a margin of 55 percent to 42 percent.
In addition, the reinstitution of the global gag rule sends a broader message to other countries that they won't get aid from the United States unless they conform to the religious beliefs of a few of our leaders. It is a message of arrogance: do this our way because it's the right way, and if you don't listen you can forget about getting aid. Of course, the U.S. has shown such bullheadedness before, but that doesn't mean it should happen again and keep happening.
It is also a message that signals a lack of realization that things in the rest of the world don't work necessarily in the same way as they do in the U.S. A big part of pro-lifers' argument is that preventing women from having abortions saves the lives of unborn children. Ostensibly, they think that women who otherwise would have had an abortion give the baby up for adoption instead, or even end up choosing to keep it. David Osteen, of the National Right to Life Committee, said that the rule's reinstatement will "save the lives of many unborn children all over the world" (Salon.com, "The most dangerous game," Jan.23).
That's not necessarily true. In some parts of the world, the tragic fact is that the children of mothers who want to abort them and cannot may be brought into the world only to die soon after their births.
China is one example. There, government population control efforts force couples to limit themselves to having only one child. Because sons are more likely to be able to support their families and require no marriage dowry, they are more valuable than daughters. As a result, pregnant women who learn they are carrying female fetuses will sometimes go to desperate lengths in order not to waste their allotment on a daughter. They undergo botched abortions, often dying themselves, or, in extreme cases, they resort to infanticide.
Forbidding organizations in other countries from even discussing abortion will itself be the cause, not the cessation, of preventable deaths. New York House Democrat Carolyn Maloney told the Associated Press that "every day, at least 1,600 women and girls die from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth" and that the victims will be "the world's poorest women and girls." Bush himself claims to support abortion in cases of rape, incest and "pain to the mother." His decision to cut off funds for organizations that discuss abortion in any circumstance puts those claims into question.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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