Recently, I watched the 2007 documentary, Unborn in the U.S.A. As the title promises, the movie takes the viewer inside the battle against abortions: anti-choice campaigners use graphic fetal images to canvas against abortions in universities, outside hospitals, and on highways; extremists threaten care providers, and contest prochoice legislations; anti-choice groups counsel young girls, even rape victims on “keeping the baby”.

Every image and every message reinforces the abortion stigma, toys with women’s emotions, and forces them to feel ashamed of their decisions. The values adopted by these groups are ensconced in religious teachings, and are used to attack arguments made on grounds of social justice, or human rights. The movement could easily be ignored as an annoyance, if not for the strong political backing it has from the core members of the Republican Party, and other conservative leaders. Prominent statesmen reinforce these anti-choice views in their speeches, and campaigns. Worse yet, these anti-choice values reflect in the policies several Republican governors, congressmen, senators and Presidents have fought hard for.

One such policy that affects not just the U.S., but several parts of the developing world is the abortion gag rule that bans American funds from reaching international organizations that provide abortion services, including accurate information on safe abortions. In the last 30 years, the policy has stalled progression in over 16 developing countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia, including Nepal, and Pakistan.

EngenderHealth, an NGO, studied the effect of the gag rule on maternal health in Nepal during the presidency of George Bush Jr. In one of the interviews, an anonymous staff member of a Nepalese NGO urged the U.S. government to repeal the gag rule, “They must dismantle it. Maternal mortality rates are the highest in the world in Nepal. Mothers who are deprived of improving their health are going to die. They would not have to die in the future if the gag rule was removed.”

Unfortunately, in spite of its devastating impacts, the policy remains an unresolved issue of national debate in the U.S. since its inception in 1984. The then president Ronald Reagen, a conservative Republican, announced the gag rule during the United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City. Ever since all Republican Presidents (George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr.) have endorsed this policy and its anti-choice views in the belief that American tax dollars should not be used in support of abortions in the U.S., or abroad. But in the years in between their terms, the two Democratic Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have repealed the laws on grounds that the health of women cannot be compromised.

With the American elections quick on our heels, it is time again for the world to wonder if Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate will follow the example of his predecessors, or find a diplomatic middle ground that will keep these international NGOs afloat.

Mitt Romney’s stance on abortion however remains pretty ambiguous. In 1994, he famously supported Planned Parenthood, but in the recent Republican primaries he claimed to support the anti-choice wing of the Republican Party. It is hard to say if Romney has actually become anti-choice since his days as the Governor of Massachusetts, or is simply trying to woo the core members of the Republican party. As long as he endorses anti-choice values, he has a powerful ally in Reagan’s son, Michael Reagen, who recently said, “It may come as a surprise to these purists, but Ronald Reagan once supported abortion too. . . Romney’s record shows he should be totally acceptable to all conservatives.” However, Romney has thus far refused to sign the infamous “personhood legislation” that confers the right to live on a fetus at conception.

The Democratic incumbent Obama, on the other hand, has picked a neutral stance in his need to woo liberal republicans: while he is not anti-choice, he has done little to directly facilitate safe abortion services within the country. This is aggravating for American feminists and liberals especially with Mississippi’s state government fighting to shut down the state’s only abortion clinic, and the Texas leadership under Rick Perry, legislating a ban on doctors sharing information on safe abortions with their patients. However, the abortion gag rule is a federal decision, and Obama will keep the policy repealed if elected.

It’s sad that the policy should remain something of a ball game between the two parties, when it gives developing countries a cause for anxiety. In a recent interview on the subject with Irin Carmon of Salon magazine, Kenyan women’s rights advocate Rosemary Muganda-Onyando, said“From our understanding, if you had any work on abortion, whether it was just prevention or education, even if that funding came from somebody else, you couldn’t get any funding at all. Even for a project on agriculture.” Kenyan NGOs, she added, were afraid of the consequences of Romney’s election to office. The same can be said of NGOs in the Middle East, and Asia.

The world has other reasons to resist the anti-choice movement in the United States. The perverse methods adopted by American anti-choice groups and portrayed in the film, Unborn in the U.S.A, percolate the globe, and affect women worldwide. American anti-choice groups inspire organizations that have recently mushroomed in Britain, Ireland and Europe. In the last few months, Britain reported a rise in anti-choice banners outside health centers, and Irish roads were bombarded with offensive anti-choice billboards.

Myths propagated by anti-choice groups in the U.S. find their way around the globe. The “gendercide” myth (that abortions are used primarily as a sex-selection tool) reverberated in the way the Indian media and government targeted abortions in the recent campaign against sex-selection.

It is so ironic that the world should care so much about one country’s elections, or their anti-choice movement. But as long as America commands a position of leadership and dictates the influx of funds to developing countries, American presidency and the country’s many social movements will remain a cause for concern for the whole world.