ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTORY PUZZLE: WHY THE GLOBAL GAG RULE IS ENACTED OR REPEALED EVERY EIGHT YEARS In 1973, Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, the Foreign Assistance Act, an overhaul of an act of the same name passed by Congress in 1961. The 1973 act reflected a bipartisan consensus that America’s political and economic interests as well as the welfare of the world’s poor and even the planet’s survival depended on government-sponsored family planning in developing countries. Section 104 of the act, titled “Population Planning and Health,” stipulated that “in order to increase the opportunities and motivation for family planning, to reduce the rate of population growth, to prevent and combat disease, and to help provide health services for the great majority,” the president was “authorized to furnish assistance on such terms and conditions as he may determine, for population planning and health.” Congress set the goals-and appropriated the funds-and tasked the president with devising the means best calculated to carry out those ends. This is the way the textbooks say it should be: Congress legislates and the president executes.1
