Of the many crises President Barack Obama faces, few are more urgent than preventing the needless deaths of half a million people this year. This is the number of women who die annually from a lack of basic reproductive health services. Unlike the global recession, climate change, and other disasters compounded by George W. Bush, the crisis of maternal mortality is easily resolved. Last week, Obama took an important first step by rescinding the "global gag rule."

Formally known as the Mexico City Policy for the place where it was first announced, the gag rule cut U.S. funding to foreign healthcare organizations that provide abortions or abortion counseling, or advocate legalizing abortion in their own countries (though in true Bush-era fashion, anti-abortion advocacy was permitted).

The policy was nicknamed the “global gag rule” because it stifles free speech and public debate, violating healthcare workers’ right to press to change the laws that lead to nearly 70,000 abortion-related deaths each year. The gag rule was thus an attack on women’s health, democratic process, and free speech. Rescinding it is a fitting farewell to the Bush era, but it’s only the first step in a needed overhaul of U.S. reproductive health policy.