During his historic presidential campaign, Barack Obama championed women’s rights and health around the world. Days after he took office in January, President Obama rescinded the global gag rule, a political order that President George W. Bush instated in 2001. Pandering to the anti-abortion constituency, the gag rule prohibits foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from receiving U.S. foreign assistance if they perform, counsel, refer or lobby for the legalization of abortions in their home countries. The gag rule, so named for its violation of the First Amendment, applies even when none of the funds for these activities come from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The gag rule has swayed with the political tides of Washington for the past 25 years to the detriment of women’s reproductive health. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan introduced what was formally known as the Mexico City Policy, which remained in effect until President Bill Clinton rescinded the policy shortly after he took office in 1993. Embattled against a Republican Congress who withheld United Nations dues and omnibus spending bills, Clinton was eventually forced in 1999 to accept the Smith Amendment which certified NGO compliance with gag rule restrictions. Bush reinstated the gag rule upon taking office and it remained effective for the next eight years despite numerous attempts by both the House and Senate to remove the rule from foreign appropriations.

These political games have forced NGOs, vital to women’s health around the world, to choose between losing critical funding or restricting doctors and health providers from freely informing patients of their best healthcare options. Inadequate information and access to reproductive care has had deleterious effects, as an estimated 66,500 women worldwide die from unsafe abortions every year.

A group of NGOs has documented the gag rule’s impact on nine European, Latin American and African countries receiving U.S. foreign assistance. Family planning organizations that refused to comply suffered from a deficiency of key resources, the closure of clinics, and the reduction of funds for important HIV/AIDS, maternal health and sexual health programs.

Furthermore, the lack of consistency between Congress and the presidency in foreign appropriations regarding maternal health creates undue burdens on NGOs and hospitals in the developing world. Local hospitals, which rely on NGO provisions for affordable reproductive health care, are limited without recourse. Foreign appropriations are inconsistent and inefficient under the changing policy.

The U.S. failure to provide pragmatic funding for family planning in the developing world is hypocritical, given that abortion is legal in the United States. In the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, Justice Harry Blackmun cited the Fourteenth Amendment and the right to privacy for all citizens. Why do women in Peru, India, or South Africa deserve anything less than women in America? How does the U.S. government become the arbiter for the reproductive health of women around the globe?

Our nation values equality, legality and justice as our most dearly-held virtues. The Constitution protects women’s reproductive rights from government infringement. Yet the gag rule has taken these rights away from women in the poorest places in the world—women who need their rights upheld the most. President Obama’s rescinding of the gag rule exemplifies the passion he has for women’s reproductive rights around the world. That said, most women’s and family planning organizations hope Obama’s order will last longer than his presidency, rather than being subject to the political tide in Washington.

We are in a unique point in history when we can protect the rights of poor women so that they are not subject to the caprice of Washington. President Obama should work with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to push through legislation that will make aid unrestricted and protect women’s right to access sound maternal health care. Now is the time for Congress to remove the gag rule from the appropriations process.

The Global Democracy Promotion Act, written by Congresswoman Barbara Boxer and supported by members in both chambers of Congress, upholds the fundamental American principles of medical ethics and freedom of speech in U.S. foreign assistance. The Congress, in conjunction with President Obama, should enact such bipartisan legislation to irrevocably prohibit restrictive procurement requirements on foreign NGOs in matters of maternal health.

Women in the developing world deserve no less than American women. Rather than trying to shape governments that adhere to our values in our foreign policy, we should start with adhering to them ourselves.