Today it’s Throwback Thursday for our Video of the Week, though this particular video focuses on a time we’d rather not go back to.
Access Denied is PAI’s 2003 film documenting the effects of the Global Gag Rule in Zambia. Yes, that Global Gag Rule. The one that was introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984 and in effect for 8 years during the George W. Bush administration. The one that closed clinics and stopped shipments of U.S.-donated contraceptives to 16 developing countries, primarily in Africa. The same one that the House Appropriations Committee voted to reinstate earlier this year (thankfully, this has not become law), and that our President & CEO Suzanne Ehlers wrote about in a joint op-ed with Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) earlier this week.
In 2003, this film made the case for why the Gag Rule hurt women, and needed to be repealed. That case still stands. And yet, without a permanent legislative repeal, the bad policy could still come back under a future U.S. president hostile to family planning. That’s one throwback we don’t want to see.
