With little fanfare from the news media, Barack Obama overturned yet another Bush policy on Jan 23, 2009, the anti-abortion 'global gag rule', which prohibited U.S. funding to international groups that perform abortions or provide information about them.

Legally known as the 'Mexico City Policy', it was originally passed by Reagan and announced first in Mexico City on the 11th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Clinton overturned it in January 1993, and Bush re-instated in January 2001.

While the U.S. government banned directly using money using taxpayer funds to pay for international abortions in 1973, the global gag rule of Reagan and Bush went one step further- denying American funds and medical supplies to any organization that even told clients where an abortion could be performed.

Those in support of the law do so on mainly moral and religious grounds, arguing that abortion is murder and should not be state-funded in the US or anywhere else in the world. They also cite that the policy prohibits organizations from 'pushing' abortions, and conducting abortions in countries where abortion is illegal.

Opponents argue that the policy was "...fundamentally a bribe not to discuss particular family planning and health services," said Chloe Williams, a UW women's studies major and former sexual health peer educator in Everett. "NGOs which received federal funding were not allowed to perform, discuss, or promote abortion services in their family planning programs. If an organization addressed abortion, funding stopped, aid was suspended... even if the abortion services or education were paid for with the NGOs own separate funds."

Population Action International, a non-profit family planning advocacy group, labeled the policy as even more harmful, issuing a statement in their study that read "these organizations lose valuable technical assistance and U.S.-donated contraceptives, including condoms-two critical aspects of the USAID family planning program...this contributes to serious (global health) problems."

The dismissal of the policy has touched off a storm of controversy in the religious community, with condemnation coming almost instantaneously from the Vatican. Archbishop Rino Fischella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, chided Obama, saying "What is important is to know how to listen, without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death." The author wonders if the Vatican saw the irony in that statement.