This episode focuses on the Mexico City policy, sometimes referred to as the "global gag rule," which requires nongovernmental organizations to agree and certify that they would not perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations in order to receive federal funds. The Reagan administration announced the policy at a conference in Mexico City in 1984, President Bill Clinton lifted the ban in 1993 while also lifting other restrictions on abortion, and President Bush restored the ban in 2001 on his first full day in office (statement on-line here).

"The Mexico City policy has cost many lives and actually increased to a large degree the number of unintended pregnancies and illegal, unsafe abortions causing death and disability," IPPF Director-General Ingar Brueggemann said in a January 2001 statement (on-line here).

President Clinton removed the Mexico City restrictions in 1993, but they were temporarily re-enacted as a compromise between the Clinton Administration and Congressional Republicans to pay some of the United States' arrears to the United Nations. That compromise restored the restrictions for fiscal year 2000 but allowed Clinton to waive some of the requirements in return for a reduction in overall funding for population assistance from $382 to $372.5 million. Both the restrictions and the reduction in funding were undone for fiscal year 2001, but no funds were to be used until the new president took office.