I WON’T BE GAGGED
THE GLOBAL GAG RULE
Being a leader means making hard choices.
We applied for almost $90,000 AUD of funding from a large, well-respected, household-name charity, who receive significant amounts of funding from USAID to disburse among other charities to achieve set outcomes.
I’m choosing not to identify which charity it was because they neither make up this rule nor necessarily like or approve of it. But because they receive funding from USAID they are therefore bound by USAID’s rules and regulations.
Not being from, living in or working in the States, I don’t follow their politics as closely as I might. And hence it came as a complete surprise to me to see that in our funding assessment, they had concerns that we, in our work with the girls and families on the program, might refer them to health services that include abortion. And the funding assessment continued that we should inform them of any such activities, as well as training our team that any discussion or referral related to abortion as a method of family planning is not allowed.
Wait! What?
In 8 years of working with girls and families in rural communities, we have not been asked about abortion. We have been asked about the pill and we have had frank and honest conversations. We have also talked about condoms. We have not though been asked about abortions, so it is unlikely, yet entirely possible.
And should a woman, or man, want to discuss or explore with us the possibility of abortion, we would be supportive, informative and helpful. We would be honest.
That means we would be emotionally supportive of the situation they are in, and the choice they have to make.
We would provide information, not judgement, about what choices are available to them, where they can go to learn what the procedure is, information on Cambodia’s laws on family planning, contraception, and abortion.
Being helpful means if they didn’t know which clinic to go to we would help them find out if they needed to borrow a phone to make an appointment we would lend them our phone, if they didn’t know the phone number we’d find out for them, if they didn’t have transport to get to the clinic to discuss their options with a trained professional then we’d help them with the cost of transport.
So yes, we might refer them to access health services and that service might include abortion. That will be her choice.
We would not lead her in one direction or another. We would provide information and support.
How could that be wrong?
Not my uterus, not my decision.
The funding assessment said that any discussion or referral related to abortion as a method of family planning is not allowed.
Let’s check the law here…
Under the law, a woman may obtain an abortion on request during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Beyond 12 weeks, under Cambodian law there are restrictions, but within the first 12 weeks, it is available upon request.
Shouldn’t the woman who chooses to discuss her pregnancy options with us be given this information?
And that’s when I learned about The Global Gag Rule.
The Mexico City Policy, known by opponents as the Global Gag Rule, prohibits US foreign assistance to any organisation that performs or provides counselling on abortion. It was first announced by US President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been lifted by Democrat administrations and reinstated by Republican administrations numerous times since.
It isn’t about what is allowed by Cambodian law for this woman living in Cambodia - it is about the stipulations of USAID funding!
If we were to accept USAID funding we would have to train our staff that abortion for family planning purposes is not allowed. Even though it is! So Free To Shine, here to prevent the exploitation of girls, by strengthening family and community systems to prioritise the safety and education of their children, would be required to lie in the name of a US political agenda.
No thanks.
Should I be training my Cambodian staff on available, lawful options within Cambodia, or should I be training them on what is not allowed within political parties in America!!!! It’s ludicrous.
But it’s real.
To receive this funding, a significant $90,000, I would have to train my team to lie. Should a woman, or man, in a time of need, a time of needing the truth, and needing to know what their options are, would have to be told by my team simply that it isn’t allowed.
I do not know if I am right, but I said F**K OFF to funding that requires us to lie.
F**K OFF to funding that requires us to lie to a person in a time of need.
Women and girls have a human right—protected under international law—to make their own choices about whether and when to have children, and about how many children they have.
I say I do not know if I am right because the people who could have been helped with that $90,000 will now not be helped.
Well, these particular people won’t be helped by us. But I expect an organisation will accept the money and so people somewhere in Cambodia will be helped by this money.
So, that begs the question, how many vulnerable women in Cambodia (and across the world) are currently being lied to?
It is entirely possible we could have received and spent that funding without a woman approaching us asking about her pregnancy options.
Other leaders tell me they’d have taken the money.
Point is, I won’t teach my team to lie.
I won’t even teach them to lie for $90,000.
Because once we start, where does it stop?
It’s always been of the highest importance to me that I trust my entire team. I require from them complete honesty.
That has to work both ways; it means they get from me complete honesty.
What kind of mess will we all end up in if we begin lying for money, isn’t that the very basis of corruption?
The other thing that is interesting, and by interesting I mean annoying, is that when you apply for funding such as this the rules and regulations imposed are imposed across the entire program.
US law has banned using US foreign aid for abortion-related activities since 1973. The Mexico City Policy is a separate rule that goes further, stripping foreign nongovernment organisations of all USAID funding if they use funds from any source to offer information about abortions, provide abortions, or advocate liberalising abortion laws.
In this example, the funding application was for approximately 21% of our budget, to expand our program to additional girls and families, but would have required we told that lie across the board to women we already work with funded by other people’s money. It just doesn’t seem right on any level.
Further reading:
https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1868/303maa.pdf
https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1864/FINAL_Protecting_Life_in_Global_Health_Assistance_FAQs_Oct_2019_USAID_1.pdf
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/what-global-gag-rule
https://www.cgdev.org/article/new-study-finds-mexico-city-policy-increased-abortion-40-percent
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(19)30267-0/fulltext
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/trumps-mexico-city-policy-or-global-gag-rule?fbclid=IwAR1psOKG4fekJY3S4gOkNjy7nBLv2d5Dy3BtFZcuoLipZRtdRfBf0kOVoak