President Joe Biden and I have met many times throughout my life and over the course of his political career. Our last meeting was in 2008 at the funeral of my grandfather, the late Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
Biden and my grandfather started their first Senate terms together in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court. Although my grandfather was a Republican who opposed civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, HIV/AIDS research and abortion, Biden found a way to cross the political divide and work with him on some of these controversial issues, and even helped to soften his views over the years.
Now, at a time when standing up for abortion access is more urgent than ever, the president should seize the chance to counter one of the most painful legacies of my grandfather — the Helms Amendment. Congress should repeal the Helms Amendment in its entirety, but Biden already has it within his authority to roll back some of the measure’s harshest restrictions. He should act immediately.
When my grandfather introduced the proposal, he was a conservative freshman senator with something to prove. He set out to dissolve the United States Agency for International Development, the agency that provides U.S. foreign assistance around the world, and when that didn’t work, he set his ambitions on another mission: prohibiting USAID from funding abortion care.
Sadly, he was successful. The Helms Amendment, signed into law as part of the Foreign Assistance Act on Dec. 17, 1973, was intended to undermine access to abortion on the international level. Although it prohibits the use of any U.S. foreign assistance funds for “abortion as a method of family planning,” it has been interpreted and enforced by every presidential administration since 1973 as an outright ban on funding safe abortion — and providing abortion information — including in cases in which women have been raped, forced into incestuous relationships or whose pregnancies put their lives in danger. And it applies even in countries where abortion is legally permitted.
The president has vowed to do all he can to mitigate the disaster at the Supreme Court; it’s the perfect time for Biden to end this cruel and extreme implementation of the law, a power that is already within his authority.
Until he acts, the United States is actively discriminating against women and pregnant people who need reproductive health care, including abortion, and who receive their health care from USAID-funded facilities. That means that many women turn to unsafe abortion — 35 million each year, in fact. And tens of thousands of mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, and others have died unnecessarily because of the Helms Amendment — because of my grandfather.
Around the time of the Helms Amendment, my grandfather also aligned himself with the notorious dictator Augusto Pinochet of Chile and later with the death squad commander Major Roberto D’Aubuisson of El Salvador. Thousands of women were raped, tortured and murdered during these bloody years in Latin America. It’s no secret that the use of rape as a method of political violence and oppression against women is all too common in this kind of political upheaval. Just look at the situation in Ukraine now. The language of the Helms Amendment does not actually prohibit recipients of USAID funding from helping these women — but, again, it has been interpreted to do so, and so in practice in virtually every country that receives U.S. foreign assistance, and even in humanitarian crises, survivors of rape are denied abortion services and have been since 1973 when my grandfather’s amendment was passed. It’s time for this to stop.
By the end of his 30-year Senate career, my grandfather had softened his position on important issues. As I understand it, President Biden, you played a part of his early reevaluation process via the Helms-Biden Act. The work he did with you and others with that law to both reform the United Nations (another organization he loathed and wanted disbanded) and pay off the U.S. government’s debt to the U.N., no doubt helped prepare my grandfather for his future relationship with U2’s Bono on HIV/AIDS issues. He worked with Bono and USAID on a historic aid package, earmarking $500 million to stop the transmission of HIV from mother to unborn child. This is a part of my grandfather’s legacy I am proud of; it inspired me to become an activist and work with Ipas, an international reproductive justice organization that began its work in 1973, in part because of the Helms Amendment.
My grandfather has been gone for well over a decade. But the harmful consequences of his tenure remain. We are now reeling from the dismantling of Roe v. Wade. And what we know is that poor Black and brown people in the U.S. will carry the burden, just as they carry the burden of the Helms Amendment in countries thousands of miles from the United States.
With a spirit of transformation and change, President Biden, you can help put an end to preventable deaths and unnecessary suffering. The administration should, for starters, end the unnecessarily broad enforcement of the Helms Amendment and clarify that the term “abortion as a method of family planning” does not apply to abortions provided in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the pregnant person. You should also champion legislation to fully repeal the amendment.
Taking on the Helms Amendment has special meaning to me, as it would help put an end to one of my grandfather’s harmful legacies — but more important, it would make the world a more healthy, safe and just place for all.
The opinion expressed here is my own. I do not speak for any of my family members, nor do I speak for any organization connected to my grandfather.
