Why It’s Time to End This Bad Abortion Policy
the US Exports Abroad
Congress can take action right now to permanently repeal the harmful global gag
rule by passing funding bills for FY 2022.
Feb 4, 2022
Vanessa Geffrard, Rewire News
Under the glow of a cell phone flashlight, I watched as the clinician inserted
the last intrauterine device. It was past 8 p.m., and as night stretched out
before us, I reflected on a ten-plus-hour day spent helping well over 100 women
who had waited all day to get an IUD, birth control, or gynecological services
at a rural village health center.
It was July 2015, and I was in Nigeria for three weeks (and Kenya for one week)
as part of the Planned Parenthood Global Youth Ambassador Fellowship Program to
witness some of Planned Parenthood Global’s work expanding sexual and
reproductive health services in communities. Demand for these services—and a
clinic staff dedicated to delivering them—was clear. These women, many of them
with their children, had traveled some distance to spend hours waiting for
sexual and reproductive health care. To provide care to everyone present, the
clinicians skipped their lunches.