Biden Will End the Unconscionable Anti-Abortion Global Gag Rule, Just Like Every Democratic President Since Reagan

By Emily Alford  |  January 21, 2021 | 6:00pm
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Biden Will End the Unconscionable Anti-Abortion Global Gag Rule, Just Like Every Democratic President Since Reagan
Image:ANDREW CABALLERO (Getty Images)

A mere three days after his inauguration in 2009, then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order overturning the “global gag rule” which bans non-governmental organizations in countries receiving U.S. family planning aid from performing or even mentioning abortions, effectively turning them into America as designed by Mississippi. One term president Donald Trump, who loves destroying anything remotely related to Obama, obviously reinstated the rule, also nicknamed the “Mexico City policy.” Now, President Joe Biden has announced that he will overturn the policy again, less than 24 hours into his own presidency.

The rule forced countries to make the choice between receiving aid and maintaining their women’s health clinics; when these clinics inevitably began to close, rates in STIs and unsafe abortions rose in turn. Dr. Anthony Fauci, likely grateful to have a competent boss again, introduced the change in a speech to the World Health Organization this morning, which also doubled as an unspoken but obvious apology for having had such a shitty president in the first place and an announcement that the U.S. would not be Amexiting the WHO after all.

“President Biden will be revoking the ‘Mexico City policy’ in the coming days as part of his broader commitment to protect women’s health and advance gender equality at home and around the world,” Fauci told the WHO.

Overturning the policy, which was first introduced by another racist president America elected mostly because they’d seen him in movies and on TV, Ronald Reagan, has been a rite of passage for every Democrat president in the decades since it first appeared. Welcome, Joe, and thank you for playing tug of war with a terrible policy that is now old enough to have a kid graduating high school. Make America 2009 again!

 
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