It’s a relief to see the Biden administration swiftly begin to dismantle the crippling rules and regulations put in place by the Trump administration to prevent health care providers not just from offering abortions but from even offering information about the procedure to patients.
On Thursday, Biden repealed the global gag rule that forces foreign nongovernmental health care providers who receive U.S. financial aid to agree not to offer abortions — even when they do so with funds from other sources. These providers are also forbidden, as a condition of receiving aid, from counseling patients on abortion or offering abortion referrals.
The global gag rule has been alternately invoked by Republican presidents and withdrawn by Democratic ones ever since it was first imposed by President Ronald Reagan at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Mexico City in 1984 (which is why it is also known as the Mexico City policy). For decades, the use of federal dollars to subsidize abortion care in the U.S. has been barred by the Hyde Amendment. Similarly, the Helms Amendment prohibits federal funds granted to foreign health care organizations from being used for abortion.
The global gag rule is onerous enough when it prevents family planning organizations in foreign countries from providing abortions or counseling on abortion. But under the Trump administration, the rule was extended to any health care organization that also happened to provide reproductive care. That meant organizations providing care in the fields of HIV/AIDS, malaria, maternal and child health were at risk of losing billions of dollars in U.S. aid unless they stopped any and all levels of their abortion care.
When organizations agreed to the terms, they couldn’t provide reproductive-age women with information on abortion even if they requested it. When organizations refused to comply and lost much-needed aid, they sometimes had to scale back public health programs.
Biden also ordered a review of a similar rule — sometimes called the domestic gag rule — that prevents U.S. health care providers who get funds from the Title X Family Planning Program from counseling patients on abortion.
This so-called domestic gag rule, issued in 2019 by the Department of Health and Human Services, requires Title X Family Planning Program recipients to physically segregate their abortion services from any other health care services. Previously, they didn’t have to do that. And whether or not the Title X providers offered abortion, they were barred from specifically referring patients to an abortion provider, even if patients requested one.
Neither of these gag rules should be in place. They do nothing but thwart access to a wide range of health services needed by people with the least means around the globe.
But as smart as these moves are, the Biden administration should do more.
It should work with Congress to pass legislation that will prevent the global gag rule from ever being put in place again. The health care organizations that desperately need this funding do not need to be put through a back-and-forth of building up and whittling down their capacity every four to eight years.
— Los Angeles Times
