A Step in the Right Direction
September 18, 2007 10:34:00
by Anna
Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota
One of my most vivid memories of the 2006-2007 school year, at which point I was a freshman at Macalester College in St. Paul, is the night of the Congressional elections. It was a true specimen of dorm unity; everyone on my hall gathered in the lounge to watch the news that night, chairs pushed as close to the television as possible and chemistry books and laptops open across every lap (at a nerdy school like mine, you can count on the students to get their homework done no matter what stands in their way).
Much of the past year, since those elections took place, has been disappointing. Congress is so closely divided down partisan lines that many issues have become a question of “how many Republicans/Democrats can be persuaded to side with this bill?” rather than a question of what is really important to push through into law.
Taking all these things into account, I was thrilled to hear that on September 6 the Senate voted 81 to 12 to pass the Fiscal Year 2008 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. The bill, which the House passed back in June, contained an amendment repealing the Global Gag Rule, a term used to reference the administration’s refusal to fund international family planning organizations that support abortion rights.
The many close followers of my column (kidding, kidding) might recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill as part of a discussion concerning the Bush Administration’s refusal to fund the United Nations Population Fund. About $161 million have been kept from the UNFPA each year under the Bush Administration since 2002, but the bill would guarantee UNFPA renewed funding.
Well, in its finished form, the bill goes a step further by completely getting rid of the Global Gag Rule, meaning that all international family planning organizations that Bush has continually withheld funding from because of their support of abortion rights, including UNFPA, USAID and many more, would be financed again.
Of course, Bush is still threatening a veto. The Senate vote on the amendment to the bill that repealed the Global Gag Rule was 53-41, so there’s no saying at this point whether it’s possible to pull together the two-thirds needed for an override. Still, it is inspiring to consider the high support rate in the Senate, which is so closely divided between the reds and blues. This seems to indicate that the issue rises above partisan lines to address the basic rights of women in developing nations who don’t have access to safe reproductive health care without the orgs that Bush has been so unyieldingly opposed to.
The fact that these issues are questions of basic rights rather than what political party a person belongs to, of course, is just the kind of thing that those of us at Planned Parenthood are keen to emphasize.
Thinking back to that November night (which is the one time I can remember when a group of college students has been more focused on the news than Facebook), the fact that we elected Congressmen and women who are willing to stand up to the administration on such an urgent issue definitely looks like a step in the right direction.
Now, about abstinence-only education…
