UNITED STATES: GOVERNMENT :
DATABASES :
DEMOGRAPHY: ISSUES :
MEDICAL: ABORTION:
Government Database Restricting Information On Abortion
WEBBIB0708
Government Database Restricting Information On Abortion
The Experiment
<http://www.theexperiment.org/?p=2275>
Your tax dollars at work. Yesterday I saw a posting on the Progressive
Librarian Guild list stating that the word abortion was now a stop word*
on POPLINE, a database of the Worlds reproductive health literature This
means that they will not find results when a person uses abortion as a
search term. Nothing will come up. Librarian Activist says that:
A librarian wrote to the POPLINE database providers to ask why a search
strategy, probably involving the word abortion, retrieved fewer results
than it did 3 months earlier. The response was:
Yes we did make a change in POPLINE. We recently made all abortion terms
stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for
now.
Best for now? I dont think so. Contact POPLINE here.
Info about POPLINE from their site:
<http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/>
----------------------------------------
About POPLINE
<http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/aboutpl.html>
POPLINE(POPulation information onLINE), the world's largest database on
reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific
articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of
population, family planning, and related health issues. POPLINE is
maintained by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health/Center for Communication Programs and is funded by the
United States Agency for International Development. (USAID).
POPLINE contains nearly 360,000 records and has been maintained since 1973
by the INFO Project (formerly Population Information Program). The
majority of items are published from 1970 to the present, however, there
are selected citations dating back to 1827. The database adds 12,000
records annually and is updated every Monday.
In addition to free text searching, the database can be searched by
keywords from the POPLINE Thesaurus , a controlled vocabulary of 2,400+
terms used to index documents in the database.
POPLINE's special features include links to free, fulltext documents; the
ability to limit your search to peer-reviewed journal articles; RSS feeds
for topical searches; and many abstracts in French and Spanish.
----------------------------------------
USAID's Family Planning Guiding Principles and U.S. Legislative and Policy
Requirements
Restrictions on Support for Abortions
<http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/pop/restrictions.html>
Since the enactment of legislation in 1973, recipients of U.S. family
planning assistance have been legally prohibited from supporting abortion
as a method of family planning using U.S. funds. USAID places high
priority on preventing abortions through the use of family planning,
saving the lives of women who suffer complications arising from unsafe
abortion, and linking those women to voluntary family planning and other
reproductive health services that will help prevent subsequent abortions.
Download Arabic Translation [PDF, 83KB]
The Helms Amendment
No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of
abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any
person to practice abortions.
Spanish [PDF, 19KB], French [PDF, 19KB]
Sources: Section 104(f) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended;
Annual Foreign Operations Appropriations Acts.
The Leahy Amendment
The term "motivate," as it relates to family planning assistance, shall
not be construed to prohibit the provision, consistent with local law, of
information or counseling about all pregnancy options.
Spanish [PDF, 19KB], French [PDF, 19KB]
Source: Annual Foreign Operations Appropriations Acts.
The Siljander Amendment
No foreign assistance funds may be used to lobby for or against abortion.
Source: FY 2006 Appropriations Act, Title II, "Child Survival and Health
Programs Fund" and/or Title V, Section 518.
The Biden Amendment
No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for any biomedical research
which relates, in whole or in part, to methods of, or the performance of,
abortions or involuntary sterilization as a means of family planning.
Sources: Section 104(f) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended;
Annual Foreign Operations Appropriations Acts.
The Mexico City Policy
On January 22, 2001, President Bush restored the Mexico City Policy that
had been in place from 1985 1993. The Mexico City Policy requires foreign
(non-U.S.) nongovernmental organizations to certify that they will not
perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning as a
condition for receiving USAID assistance for family planning.
The press release accompanying President Bush's Memorandum of January 22,
2001 restoring the Mexico City Policy states that "[t]he President's clear
intention is that any restrictions do not limit organizations from
treating injuries or illnesses caused by legal or illegal abortions, for
example, postabortion care."
September 10, 2001 Memo from Duff Gillespie, Deputy Assistant
Administrator, Population, Health and Nutrition
This memo provides more information on USAID support for postabortion care
in the context of the Mexico City Policy. Available in English [PDF,
21KB], Spanish [PDF, 27KB], French [PDF, 24KB], Arabic [PDF, 70KB].
In August of 2003, the President extended the Mexico City Policy to
"voluntary population planning" assistance provided by the Department of
State. The President's memorandum excludes from the Mexico City Policy
"foreign assistance furnished pursuant to the United States Leadership
Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003." Therefore,
assistance solely for HIV/AIDS activities is not subject to the Mexico
City Policy.
Policy and Related Information:
Mexico City Policy Contract Information Bulletin (CIB) 01-08
Available in English [PDF, 27KB], Spanish [PDF, 169KB], French [PDF,
220KB], Arabic [PDF, 140KB].
----------------------------------------
Global Gag Rule: A Flawed Policy That Sacrifices Womens Lives
<http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/files/
Abortion-Access-to-Abortion-Refusal-Clauses-Global-Gag.pdf>
A shorter URL for the above link:
On January 22, 2001, President George W. Bush reimposed the global gag
rule, a policy that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) from granting family]planning funds to any overseas
health center unless it agrees not to use its own, private, non]U.S. funds
for: (1) abortion services, (2) abortion]related advocacy, or (3) abortion
counseling or referrals. As originally formulated, the policy applied only
to groups that receive grants from the USAIDfs family]planning program. In
August 2003, however, the Bush administration expanded the policy to cover
the entire State Department budget.
History of the Global Gag Rule
The global gag rule, also known as the gMexico City policy,h was first
imposed by a Reagan administration executive order. The policy was
introduced in 1984 and carried through the end of the first Bush
administration. Upon taking office in 1993, President Clinton signed an
executive order repealing the policy. However, by 1999, after years of
fighting to reinstate the global gag rule, anti]choice lawmakers forced
President Clinton to reinstate the policy by linking it to the release of
nearly $1 billion in U.S. back dues to the United Nations.1 This marked
the first time the global gag rule was written into law. President Clinton
vowed that the provision would not be extended beyond the one]year
duration of the funding bill.
In October 2000, the House and Senate passed a final FYf01 foreign]aid
bill that repealed the global gag rule but postponed the release of any
FYf01 funds until February 15, 2001 1
The global gag rule operating from November 1999 until October 2000
differed from the original Reagan/Bush era policy in two respects. First,
the 1999]2000 global gag rule did not include a ban on health centersf
ability to counsel or refer patients to legal abortion services elsewhere.
Second, the policy allowed a small percentage of funds . a mere $15
million, representing less than four percent of the entire USAID
family]planning account . to be made available to organizations that
declined to accept the policyfs restrictions on the use of private funds.
However, once the president invoked the waiver, which he did soon after
the bill was signed into law, $12.5 million immediately would be
transferred from the family]planning program to the USAID child survival
account.
Further complicating matters, these groups were forced to gcertifyh as a
waiver group . effectively identifying and segregating them from other
organizations that accepted the restrictions. Non]governmental
organizations and pro]choice advocates feared these groups would be
exposed to anti]choice violence and harassment. Interestingly, anti]choice
Sen. Jesse Helms (R]NC) repeatedly requested the names of the gwaiverh
groups, dismissing USAIDfs concerns about confidentiality and safety.
Read more at the URL immediately above.
More reading material on the Bush gag rule on abortion information and
discussion.
<http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=
GGLD,GGLD:2005-17,GGLD:en&q=abortion+and+%22gag+rule%22+and+bush>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://books.google.com/books?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=
GGLD,GGLD:2005-17,GGLD:en&q=abortion+and+%
22gag+rule%22+and+bush&um=1&sa=N&tab=wp>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=navclient&ie=
UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-17,GGLD:en&q=abortion+and+%
22gag+rule%22+and+bush&um=1&sa=N&tab=ps>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=abortion+and+%
22gag+rule%22+and+bush&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dunclesam=
Search+Government+Sites>
A shorter URL for the above link:
Searching abortion in Popline leads now to this result:
No records found by latest query.
Searching the term pregnancy in Popline leads to this result:
Your search found 60696 record(s).
This constitutes censorship and one must wonder if the freedom of speech,
press and information that is protected by the Constituion is not violated
by this policy in regard to the content of POPLINE.
Will Medline be the next United States government database to join this
censorship program?
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@temple.edu
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