Trump's pick for US representative to the UN is a dangerous anti-abortion fanatic
Andrew Bremberg is proud of his work expanding the US ‘gag rule’ that hurts women across the world
Bergen Cooper and Beirne Roose-Snyder
Fri 5 Jul 2019 02.01 EDT
During a fiery hearing with the Senate foreign relations committee last month, Andrew Bremberg, President Trump’s controversial nominee for US representative to the United Nations office in Geneva, declared that victims of rape and sexual violence should not be allowed to terminate their pregnancies. Bremberg pledged that, if confirmed, he would vote against any UN resolution outlining fundamental rights for survivors of sexual violence if they include abortion.
Bremberg also took credit for driving the Trump administration’s massive expansion of the global gag rule, or “Mexico City Policy”, an international anti-abortion policy that prevents foreign organizations from receiving US global health assistance if they provide information, referrals or services for legal abortion as a method of family planning, or advocate for the liberalization of abortion in their country.
To be clear, Bremberg is taking credit for cutting off access to life-saving HIV prevention, treatment and care; cervical cancer screening; voluntary male medical circumcision; and gender-based violence screening. The ripple effects of the Trump administration’s global gag rule are killing women around the world, and Bremberg wants to keep it that way.
The history of the global gag rule is a long, heavily partisan journey. First implemented by Ronald Reagan in 1984, the global gag rule was enacted to stop foreign NGOs from providing abortion or abortion-related services. Yet even Reagan, a conservative deity, made exceptions for abortions in response to rape, incest or the life of the pregnant person.
In 1993, Bill Clinton rescinded the global gag rule, calling the policy “excessively broad”. In 2001, George W Bush reinstated the rule via presidential memorandum. In 2009, shortly after taking office, Barack Obama swiftly rescinded the rule. But then came Donald Trump.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/05/facebook-ads-2020-dark-money-funding-republican-trump-weapon
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