“This poll makes it clear that President [Barack] Obama has the support of the American people in standing with women raped in conflict and breaking barriers to abortion access in post-rape care,” CHANGE President Serra Sippel said.
The poll, released on International Women’s Day, addresses one of the most brutal developments in conflicts since the early 1990s — the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war in the former Yugoslavia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and Rwanda, according to United Nations and media reports.
CHANGE is urging Obama to make foreign aid available to care for women who are victims of sexual assault in conflict zones, a step the US administration has been reluctant to take because of questionable legality.
The release surmises that the Obama administration’s reluctance to aid war rape victims is due to a decades-old US law prohibiting foreign aid being used to terminate pregnancies. The prohibition has become ingrained in US foreign policy.
CHANGE argues that the law only applies to abortion used for family planning purposes and that the measure does not cover wartime rape victims.
Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in the United States. Recent series of secret video recording of abortion provider Planned Parenthood’s senior officials discussing harvesting and selling baby organs and tissue have renewed the debate about defunding the organization.
