With so much doom & gloom splashed across newspaper headlines during the past two days (reports of both local and global job losses and violence) it's especially heartening to see some of the positive change U.S. President Barack Obama promised already taking shape. On his second day in office Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay, banned the use of torture by U.S. personnel and instructed the CIA to shut down its secret overseas prisons.
On his third, President Obama is set to lift a ban on U.S. funding for groups that provide abortion services or counselling abroad, a policy that has had a brutal impact on healthcare for some of the world's poorest women.
On his third, President Obama is set to lift a ban on U.S. funding for groups that provide abortion services or counselling abroad, a policy that has had a brutal impact on healthcare for some of the world's poorest women.
The global gag rule was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, repealed by Bill Clinton when he took office in 1993 and then reinstated by George Bush in 2001.
A spokesman for the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) told the BBC that under the Bush administration, the organisation had lost more than $100m(£73m) in funding, affecting its services across 176 countries.Globally an "estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97% of these in developing regions." Every year, "about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability."
* You can email President Obama to thank him for ending the global gag rule on this NARAL page.
