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| U.S. President-elect Barack Obama |
| Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
On Inauguration Day, Ipas welcomes President Barack Obama as the new president of the United States. Under President Obama's leadership, the new administration will be able to restore the United States to the forefront in the global movement to promote women's reproductive health and rights.
In the coming days, Ipas hopes the new administration will take early action to rescind the Global Gag Rule. In the next four years, Ipas further hopes that the new administration will take more steps to fulfill our international commitments to protect women's health.
"More than 500,000 women have died from unsafe abortion during the eight-year tenure of the Bush administration because they have not had access to comprehensive reproductive health care," said Elizabeth Maguire, President and CEO of Ipas. "President Obama has an opportunity — and we believe the passion and commitment — to make a huge difference for women's reproductive health and rights."
Maguire, a former director of the international family planning assistance program in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was one of five authors of a report released January 16 calling on the U.S. to triple its financial commitment to reproductive health care in poor countries. In “Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance,” Maguire and colleagues Joseph Speidel, Steven Sinding, Duff Gillespie and Margaret Neuse - all former directors of the international family planning program - praise USAID as a transformative leader in international population and family planning but lament stagnation in funding over the past decade and decline in USAID's global leadership. The former directors call for a tripling in U.S. funding for international family planning, from $457 million in 2008 to $1.5 billion in 2014.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org