President Biden says he’s fighting back against abortion bans. He’s ignoring the oldest one

We are in the midst of a monumental reckoning for last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights have won in every election since the ruling, and politicians are scrambling to respond to a popular constituency that they neglected for years. Yet the reproductive rights movement should make one thing clear to any politician — especially President Joe Biden — looking to harness this energy in 2024: no platform for abortion rights is complete without a confrontation with the Helms Amendment, arguably the U.S. abortion policy with the most expansive legacy of death and suffering.

It was 50 years ago this week that the notorious segregationist, the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), successfully secured passage of his amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act. The amendment was one of many reactions to the Roe v. Wade ruling handed down earlier that same year. Despite the language of the amendment only prohibiting U.S. foreign aid funding of abortion as a “method of family planning,” it has been implemented as a total ban on abortion services, including in instances of rape, incest and life endangerment. Abortion information and counseling, including referral services, are legally permitted under the Leahy Amendment, but in practice, abortion counseling is either incorrectly understood as being prohibited or is otherwise avoided.

It’s impossible to overstate the harm five decades of Helms enforcement has wrought on the world. It has devastated global health networks, caused maternal deaths that disproportionately impact women of color, and contributed to the stagnation of maternal mortality rates globally. According to a Guttmacher Institute analysis, there could be approximately 19 million fewer unsafe abortions and 17,000 fewer maternal deaths each year if Helms were repealed.

Helms serves as the foundation for many abortion restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance. This includes the Global Gag Rule, which prevents foreign NGOs receiving U.S. assistance from using other non-U.S. funds to provide information, referral or abortion services or to advocate for the legalization of abortion in their country. Unfortunately, Helms has never received the same attention from lawmakers as the Global Gag Rule, despite many using their support for ending the latter as a demonstration of their reproductive rights bonafides.

Like every Democratic president before him, President Biden repealed the Global Gag Rule soon after taking office. Yet Helms remains in place today, with the Biden administration going so far as to actively and erroneously enforce it. In 2021, USAID canceled a planned presentation at one of their conferences, which was to be given by a researcher from the  Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on safe abortion care, citing Helms. This enforcement action was not only unnecessary but also a misunderstanding of the law, as the Leahy amendment, which was passed to clarify Helms, makes clear that sharing information on abortion where it is legal is permissible and does not violate Helms. Still, at best, this episode shows how Helms engenders confusion that nearly always leads to the restriction of abortion services and censorship of abortion speech. At worst, it shows the Biden administration is worse than indifferent to abortion rights and will actively censor abortion speech in a manner that would make any anti-abortion president proud.

The Biden administration might argue that its hands are tied on Helms, as only Congress has the power to repeal the law. Yes, it’s true that legislation like the Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act is the best way to end Helms once and for all.

However, it’s simply false that the Biden administration is powerless to do anything about Helms. Beyond the fact that his administration is actively enforcing the policy overrestrictively, President Biden has refused to take executive action clarifying that Helms allows U.S. funding of abortion care abroad in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment of the pregnant person. The law as written clearly allows these exceptions and no further act from Congress is needed — as reproductive rights activists have argued for decades, the interpretation of Helms as a total ban on abortion services is a choice made by each president.

The Biden administration’s evasion of responsibility on Helms has also taken center stage in its interaction with international human rights institutions. In October, the United States was reviewed by a committee in Geneva for its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty the U.S. ratified in 1992. Facing questions from civil society about how the U.S. is upholding its commitment to abortion as a human right, the Biden administration dodged questions about how Helms contributes to the denial of care protected by human rights around the world.

This is all critical context for the 2024 presidential election. The political class is finally realizing that abortion is a winning issue, and candidates will do everything in their power to ride that wave into office. But such support must be earned, not freely granted. For 50 years, every president has allowed the Helms Amendment to decimate the health and rights of pregnant people around the world. We shouldn’t allow President Biden to claim support for reproductive rights without a truly comprehensive commitment to ending one of the United States’ longest-running violations of the human right to abortion.

Akila Radhakrishnan is president of Global Justice Center, an international human rights organization that promotes gender equality with a focus on sexual and reproductive rights and justice for sexual and gender-based violence. Anu Kumar is the president and CEO of Ipas, an organization that works around the world to advance reproductive justice by expanding access to abortion and contraception.