http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/23/1070961/policy-womens-health-abroad/?mobile=wp

At last night’s foreign policy debate,the presidential candidates took several opportunities to frame their positions in terms of gender equality. Irin Carmon at Salon counted up nine vague allusions to women’s rights as an important component to achieving stable development in countries around the world.

However, even though Mitt Romney was the first candidate to utter the phrases “women in public life” and “gender equality,” he is on the record as supporting at least one policy that would serve to directly undermine those goals abroad. Before Romney’s campaign started tacking to the center in an attempt to obscure his extreme anti-choice record,Romney bolstered his “severely conservative” credentials by publicly supporting the reinstatement of the so-called global gag rule.

Officially know as the “Mexico City Policy,” the global gag rule is a Reagan-era policy —repealed under Clinton, reinstated under the Bush administration, and rolled back again after Obama took office —that restricts USAID funding for women’s health organizations abroad, an indirect method of targeting reproductive freedom across the world. ...