Guest Author - Candance Gordon

During his campaign, President Obama promised to be a champion for women’s reproductive rights. As we all know, though, politicians sometimes say what they think we want to hear during campaigns but don’t follow through once they get elected. President Obama has only been in office for three months, but so far he seems to be sticking to his word and working to undo some of the damage former President Bush caused to women’s reproductive rights the eight years he was in office.

On January 23, a mere three days after being inaugurated, the president repealed the global gag rule. The rule, imposed by former president Bush on his first day in office, banned the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from giving family-planning funds to overseas health centers unless they agreed not to use their own, non-U.S. funds, for abortion services or counseling. By repealing the gag rule, the world’s poorest women will again have access to prenatal care and contraception.

In February, the Obama Administration began work to repeal the Federal Refusal Rule, put in place by Bush during his last hours in office. This dangerous rule, allowed insurance companies to deny claims for contraceptives, hospitals to refuse emergency contraceptives to rape victims and HMO’s to refuse patients referrals for abortion care.

In March, President Obama and the U.S. Senate once again went to work for women’s reproductive rights by approving the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act which will restore access to affordable birth control, allowing pharmaceutical companies to once again offer low-cost contraceptives to low-income healthcare providers, and university and college healthcare clinics.

The Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations will also cut funding for the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program (CBAE), which teaches abstinence only until marriage. This program, which has been proven ineffective over and over again, will be cut by $14 million dollars under the new act.

Things are definitely moving in the right direction, but we also need to remember we are in the midst of a major economic crisis, we are fighting two wars and we have an image with the entire world that is in need of major repair. Women’s reproductive issues may not remain at the top of President Obama’s agenda. It is up to us as women to ensure that these issues do continue to be addressed and that our president continues to consider the attacks we’ve faced for the past eight years and that many continue to face at the state level a serious crisis in this country.