JENNIFER YUEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Sarah
Church (left) and Sarah Brett prepare for
a march to protest the reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy.
By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Contributor
Bruin activists assembled in Meyerhoff Park on Friday to protest
President Bush’s reinstatement of an abortion-related
law.
The policy requires non-governmental organizations that receive
federal funds to agree to neither perform nor actively promote
abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.
“We want to make sure that women in developing countries
have access to all reproductive health care information and the
same rights we have here in the U.S.,” said Steven Emmert,
senior vice-president of Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles, one of
the speakers at the rally.
Students and sympathizers gathered to listen to speakers and
then marched as a group protesting what they called
anti-reproductive rights legislation.
The rally began with speeches by representatives from Planned
Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights
League.
The group rallied against the reinstatement of the Mexico City
Policy ““ known to critics as the “global gag
rule” ““ by the Bush administration.
Holding signs and fitted with gags over their mouths, the group
then marched in silence to the Federal Building on Wilshire
Boulevard. In front of the building, the protesters set up camp and
began a vocal demonstration against the policy.
“It’s not foreign policy to influence other
countries’ methods of family planning by cutting off
funds,’ said Angela Sveda, a fourth-year English student who
coordinated the rally.
But U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the
effect of the policy will not be as drastic as its critics portray
it.
“It is obviously one with domestic ramifications,”
Boucher said in a press briefing on Jan. 23. “But family
planning has been part of our foreign policy and remains part of
our foreign policy.”
Supporters of the reinstatement offered other explanations.
“By spending taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions,
we’re exporting western values to other nations,” said
Simon Perng, executive director of Bruin Republicans. “Each
of these nations should be able to exercise its own
discretion.”
Ronald Reagan introduced the policy on funding international
family planning organizations at the Second International Funding
Conference in Mexico City in 1984. It was upheld by George Bush but
rescinded by Bill Clinton in 1993.
Bush reinstated the policy on Jan. 22, two days after his
inauguration.
“It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be
used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion,
either here or abroad,” Bush said in a memorandum to the
United States Agency for International Development.
Some of Bush’s critics said this statement is
deceiving.
“The Bush administration is trying to mislead American
taxpayers because U.S. funds have never been used for
abortions,” Emmert said. “Federal funds go to family
planning and eliminating the need for abortion.”
Defenders of Bush’s decision, however, say that the
administration hasn’t abandoned support of family planning
programs.
“We would expect a vast majority of these organizations to
be able to comply with this directive,” Boucher said. He
added that “voluntary family planning is important, and we
will continue to fund that.”
Yet participants in the rally had a more dismal perspective of
the policy.
Although right now the policy only applies to foreign nations,
it could come back to affect women in the U.S. and should be
rescinded, said Ruth Levy, a fourth-year psychology student.