The global gag rule and what to do about it
BMJ 2017; 356 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j511 (Published 01 February 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;356:j511
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I am appalled by this decision, although it seems to be consistent with his misogynist outlook. Is there a major philanthropist out there prepared to step in with termporary funding? While we wait for his hoped-for removal many women and children will suffer.
Of course the best approach to reducing terminations is to have very good general education for women, good sex education for all, and free access to all forms of contraception
Meanwhile here in the UK we don't have proper access to abortion in all of the 4 countries!
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A great disappointment and a very worrying step backwards.
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This is a very short sighted rule. Even in the United States, 70% of the public favors access to abortion. If the United States will not help with abortion funding, the other governments in the world should band together to fund this necessary resource.
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My medical school training and internship took place prior to 1963 when abortions were illegal.
One of my medical school rotations was helping to deliver babies in homes under the auspices of the Chicago Maternity Center. Most of the families we served had limited financial resources. It was usual for us to leave the babies in cardboard boxes with a mattress of newspapers. The other medical students and I never encountered anyone concerned with sanctity of life offering any help for these infants and their families. Apparently for them life begins at conception and ends with birth.
During my internship at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn I helped care for young women with injuries and complications of illegal abortions. These abortions were done outside of medical facilities and exposed the women to unsafe conditions. The women were driven by desperate circumstances to endure terrible risks. After Roe v Wade women had access to safe abortions. The uterine perforations and infections that were common in emergency rooms vanished. It is unlikely that returning to the legal situation as it was before 1970 would prevent women in extreme circumstances from seeking unsafe abortions. Legal barriers failed before and they would fail again.
The people who advocate returning to pre-1970 legal restrictions on women who need to terminate their pregnancy simply have no recollection of what went on then and believe that passing a law will prevent abortions. If these good people seriously want to reduce the number of abortions then additional steps regarding abortions should be considered. They are:
1 – creation of a fund financed solely by men to cover the cost of abortions. Since pregnancy is the result of a joint relationship it is obviously unfair to have the entire burden fall on exclusively on women. Since the origin of the pregnancy is the result of a joint activity then dealing with the results should also be joint. In addition, since assessing responsibility to individual men would be time consuming and imprecise, the assessment should be imposed on all men.
2 – any legislation designed to reduce the availability of contraception or abortion must also be paired with mechanisms for support and education of children.
Sincerely,
Philip Lempert, MD
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Decades of research have demonstrated that around 15% (or much more in some countries) of maternal deaths in low-income countries are due to unsafe and illegal abortions. Research has also demonstrated that making abortions illegal implies a rapid increase in abortion-related maternal mortality. The Romanian example is horrifying: after making abortions illegal the percentage of abortion-related maternal mortality of all maternal deaths rose to 90 (ninety) percent.
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Re: The global gag rule and what to do about it
This is not an "abortion ban" nor a "global gag" this is misleading language written by people who are clearly politically opposed to the politics of President Donald Trump. I believe this is now commonly described as "fake news".
Government and non governmental agencies in the countries affected will still be free to promote abortion or provide whatever information about it they see fit, as before.
What won't now happen is that American tax payers money will be used to fund it.
This is entirely reasonable since many US taxpayers, as in other countries, do not support abortion. So why should their money be used to promote it in other countries?
The authors claim that child malnutrition and womens and childrens health and mortality rates will suffer as a result of this decision. That is at best a tenuous conclusion to make, but in any case I am sure that the same people who don't want to promote abortion would happily see their money spent on providing food for malnourished children or improving medical care for expectant mothers and babies in those countries.
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