by Daniel Pellegrom
President Obama signed an executive order late Friday afternoon ending the Global Gag Rule.
President Obama’s decision to lift the Global Gag Rule gives me extraordinary reason to rejoice. I became Pathfinder International’s president in 1985, shortly after President Reagan imposed the original version of the Global Gag Rule (also known as the Mexico City Policy). I have openly opposed the gag rule, working for its repeal ever since.
At Pathfinder, we challenged this harmful policy in federal court in the late 1980s. Although we did not obtain an outright victory in the courts, the lawsuit forced the U.S. government to clarify what activities were legally permissible under the rule, paving the way for resumption of life-saving post-abortion medical services. Indeed, that legal challenge revealed to the court that among the repercussions of the U.S. gag rule were the preventable deaths of women in the globe’s poorest countries.
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