During January, the Family Planning Association of Maine mounted a statewide effort to encourage pro-choice Mainers – Republican, Democrat and Independent – to contact Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins about the nomination of former Senator John Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General. The concern was simple: As attorney general for the state of Missouri, as that state’s governor, and as its U.S. senator, Ashcroft has a long history of antipathy to reproductive freedom.

The effort failed; both Maine senators voted to confirm Sen. Ashcroft as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and the individual responsible for enforcing federal laws protecting the reproductive rights of women

As we attempted to inform Maine citizens of Ashcroft’s record, and the danger we felt his leadership in the Justice Department represented, some FPA supporters – pro-choice Republicans – contacted me, objecting to our efforts to persuade Sens. Snowe and Collins to wait to hear the content of the confirmation hearings before committing their votes on his behalf.

Though there were some fairly angry variations, the theme that was common to most calls and e-mails was this: Sen. Ashcroft should be believed when he testified that he would uphold the very reproductive freedom laws whose abolition he has built his political career on.

I still believe Sens. Snowe and Collins were premature when they announced their support for Ashcroft before the confirmation hearings began. I also hope that pro-choice Republican supporters of Ashcroft – and our two senators – are right and I am wrong: that he will enforce the very laws that he has so strongly opposed over the last 20 years.

The nomination debate was useful in that it underscored the keen concern many Mainers feel about the Bush administration’s sensitivity to reproductive freedom; future nominations, including the recent wave of federal judicial nominations the White House has sent to the Senate, will be closely scrutinized. The Ashcroft nomination process guaranteed that.

However, we all need to put the Ashcroft nomination process behind us. We need to move on.

In their own way, Sens. Snowe and Collins have done that by co-sponsoring the Global Democracy Protection Act, an amendment to the International Aid bill now before Congress that would repeal President George W. Bush’s executive order forbidding federal funding to overseas organizations that provide abortion counseling and referrals to women facing an unintended pregnancy.

President Bush’s executive order, taken on his first day in office, is known as the International Gag Rule and it could have the effect of increasing the number of deaths among the more than 75,000 women worldwide who already die each year from unsafe abortion.

The Global Democracy Promotion Act would guarantee that foreign nongovernmental organizations are not denied U.S. aid on the basis of medical services, which the groups provide, or on the basis of legal lobbying activities performed with their own, nongovernmental funds.

Sending a strong signal through the passage of the Global Democracy Protection Act is critically important. What is accepted policy internationally concerning a woman’s right to information about all of her options when facing an unintended pregnancy, can too easily become accepted policy domestically.

Recent history is only too instructive on this matter: For more than eight years both the Reagan and Bush administrations toiled endlessly to impose just such a gag rule on domestic family planning organizations. Their efforts failed only because the first Bush administration ran out of time to impose it.

The actions of John Ashcroft, as attorney general, will continue to be closely monitored by Mainers who care about reproductive freedom. The court nominees the White House will be sending to the U.S. Senate will be equally closely scrutinized.

In the meantime, both Sens. Snowe and Collins deserve our support as they advocate on behalf of the Global Democracy Promotion Act. Their efforts on this measure send a very strong signal to the White House that preventing women from learning about all of their options – including abortion – when facing an unintended pregnancy, is simply not acceptable, not internationally, not in the United States, and certainly not in Maine.

George A. Hill is executive director of the Family Planning Association of Maine, the statewide organization responsible for overseeing Maine’s network of 30 family planning centers.