Excerpt from the full fact sheet:

On January 23, 2009, during his first week in office, President Barack Obama repealed the global gag rule, a policy that prohibited the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from granting family-planning funds to any overseas health center unless it agreed not to use its own, private, non-U.S. funds for: (1) abortion services, (2) abortion-related advocacy, or (3) abortion counseling or referrals.

The Global Gag Rule is Flawed Policy

• Since at least 1973, no taxpayer dollars have been spent to provide or "promote" abortion services overseas.
  
• Many of the clinics subjected to the global gag rule provide a wide range of family-planning services, not just abortion services. Access to international family-planning services is one of the most effective means of reducing the need for abortion.
  
• Women in developing countries want to plan the number and spacing of their children, a goal that leads to healthier mothers and children. However, limited access to family planning results in higher rates of unintended and high-risk pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and maternal deaths.
  
• The World Health Organization estimates that more than half a million women . more than one woman every minute . die each year from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes. Ninety-nine percent of these women live in developing countries.9
  
• Among adolescents, lack of access to contraception and its consequences is particularly severe. A 2004 report found that complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death for teenage girls in the developing world. An estimated 70,000 adolescent mothers -- and more than 1 million infants -- die each year because they are not physically ready for childbearing. Yet only 17 percent of sexually active adolescents in developing nations use any form of contraception.
  
• The global gag rule not only dictated how health centers spend their private, non-U.S. funds, it prohibited organizations from engaging in the democratic process . a restriction that would be unconstitutional in the United States.

NARAL Pro-Choice America hailed President Barack Obama for taking swift and decisive action on behalf of women around the world by repealing the global gag rule.

Download the fact sheet (PDF)