Standing with Our Sisters Here and Worldwide
 Most Americans are unaware of the devastating and often deadly impacts of restrictive U.S. policies on the reproductive health and lives of women worldwide. Every year, an estimated 100,000 women worldwide suffer obstetric fistulas because of prolonged labor and no access to medical care. Each year, 529,000 women and girls die worldwide due to complications related to pregnancy, including as many as 80,000 women and girls who die every year from botched abortions, hundreds of thousands more are injured. It is estimated that currently 200 million want to delay or prevent pregnancy, but lack access to contraceptives.
The fight we face on the domestic front and the fight that we face on the global front for reproductive rights are not two separate battles: They are one and the same. It is crucial to align domestic and global family-planning movements to save women’s lives. The U.S. must once again become engaged on the international stage in expanding support for international family planning assistance to save women's lives.
United States' Assistance to International Family Planning (IFP):
US assistance to IFP has declined 40% in the past decade. At the expense of proven and effective family planning programs, funding has increasingly been directed to abstinence-only programs. The administration insists on promoting abstinence, even in developing countries where HIV and AIDS are endemic, further endangering women and disproportionately impacting young people and gravely limiting their ability to stay healthy and free of HIV and AIDS. Moreover, the 1994 UN Population Conference participants -- including the U.S. -- agreed to commit $17 billion in 2000, rising to $18.5 billion annually in order to meet worldwide family planning needs. Yet every year, the world falls short of this goal by some $7 billion. The U.S. has lapsed behind in its annual commitment, due in part to domestic anti-abortion politics, contributing to the global shortfall.
The Global Gag Rule:
On January 22, 2001, his first official day in office and the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, US President George W. Bush issued an executive order reinstating the "global gag rule," a Reagan/Bush Sr. policy that bars family planning programs outside the U.S. that receive federal aid from using separate, private monies for abortion counseling, services, referrals, and lobbying activities targeting their own government. Under this policy, international family planning programs that provide a wide range of resources, including gynecological exams, AIDS prevention and treatment, and contraception, are forced to lose a large percentage of their operating costs, or to discontinue services formerly paid for by private dollars. With no other option, young women in developing nations will again turn to illegal abortions, too many of them dying as a result of serious infections.
United States' Refusal to Fund the United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA):
For the last six years, the Bush Administration has refused to release tens of millions of dollars that Congress appropriated to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), on the grounds its program in China promotes abortion, despite subsequent investigations by the U.S. State Department and other agencies that found this allegation to be false.
To learn more about UNFPA, its programs and why it is key the US reinstate its funding, click here.
Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls:
In 1997, The Feminist Majority launched the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan to urge the US government and the U.N. to do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls. Chaired by Mavis Leno, the Feminist Majority Foundation's campaign has brought together more than 200 leading human rights and women's organizations to condemn the Taliban's human rights abuses against women and girls and to put pressure on the US and UN to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
To learn more about FM”s Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls, click here.
Download FM's fact sheets:
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Anushay Hossain: Global Programs Coordinator
Anushay Hossain began her feminist career at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) working on microfinance and non formal primary education programs for impoverished women and girls in her native country, Bangladesh. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2002 and joined the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign for Afghan Women as Project Organizer. In 2004 Anushay moved to the United Kingdom where she completed her Master’s in Gender and Development from the University of Sussex, focusing her dissertation on the barriers women face in accessing reproductive healthcare in Bangladesh. Anushay spent a year working at UNIFEM UK (United Nations Development Fund for Women) before returning to the Feminist Majority where she invests the majority of her work on global reproductive healthcare, both at the grassroots and policy levels.
Phone: (703) 522-2214
Email: ahossain@feminist.org |
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