Tracing the inauspicious history of the global gag rule can

feel like watching a game of high-stakes Ping-Pong. In 1984, Republican President Reagan instates

the rule, which forbids family planning organizations who receive US

foreign aid from performing abortions, discussing safe abortion as an option

with patients, or advocating for abortion law liberalization or reform in their

own countries – even if they use other funds for those activities.

Republican President Bush the First keeps it on the books; Democratic

President Bill Clinton rescinds it on his first day in office. Republican President Bush the Second

immediately reinstates the rule; Democratic President Obama scraps it. Women’s health advocates were delighted when

Obama got rid of the global gag rule, but a nagging – and none too

insignificant – concern remained: what about four, or eight, years from now,

when Obama is no longer be in office and his successor sees fit to bring the

gag rule back?

During the Senate Appropriations Committee mark-up

yesterday, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) proposed an amendment to the foreign

aid appropriations bill that would permanently negate the global gag rule by

stipulating that foreign NGOs should not be disqualified from receiving US

family planning assistance based on their providing services that are

permissible in their own countries and legal here. The amendment passed the committee, 17 to 11,

with one member voting present. In

introducing the amendment, Sen. Lautenberg argued that the gag rule forces NGOs

abroad to "lose out on badly needed funds, or take the money and sacrifice

their responsibility to their patients."

And, he added, it "creates no choice for the women who are forced to go

without the care they need to be healthy."

"This is not something that should flip-flop depending on

who’s president," says Susan Cohen, Director of Government Affairs for the

Guttmacher Institute. "It so affects family planning that we need to provide

stability and predictability to be most efficient and effective. And since this is the policy of the President

and Congress, we should write it into law."

In debate over the amendment, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)

predictably implied that the amendment would provide taxpayer funding for

abortion abroad, when in fact the Helms Amendment, which is unaffected by this

legislation, has long banned foreign aid funding for abortion.

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Cohen believes that the full Senate has the votes to pass

the amendment, citing the resounding defeat that greeted Sen.

Mel Martinez’s (R-FL) attempt to reinstate legislatively the global gag

rule after Obama rescinded it in late January, when 60 senators voted to keep

the gag rule off foreign aid funding.

The appropriations bill itself also allocates an increase in

family planning funding, to $628 million, of which $50 million would fund

UNFPA, the UN family planning agency.

The House allocates slightly higher levels, and the two amounts will be

reconciled in conference committee.

Speaking of conference committee – the House’s version of

the bill does not address the global gag rule.

Will that pose a problem for Lautenberg’s amendment? Advocates are hopeful that Chair of State and Foreign

Operations Subcommittee Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) will protect this amendment, and

cite Lowey’s co-sponsorship of a previous, parallel bill, the Global Democracy

Promotion Act, on which Lautenberg’s amendment was based.