In just the few days Donald Trump has been president, he has signed executive order after order, spreading his reach wide and far across the United States of America, using his policies to travel into every nook of this country to find new lives to target and destroy. This time however, Trump’s bullying ambitions have gone farther than just the women of our nation.
On the morning of January 23rd, President Donald Trump signed yet another executive order hitting hard at the lives of innocents by reinstating the “global gag rule”- a policy stating foreign organizations that receive funding from the US are prohibited from counseling patients about or using any money on abortion. The rule, introduced during the Reagan administration, was reinstated just one day after Roe. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling to legalize abortion.
This in itself is a blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but a closer look reveals Trump’s reinstatement of Reagan’s rule is so much more dangerous than expected. The president hadn’t just just revived the rule- Trump has massively expanded it. While the previous rule only applied to family planning funding, the president has expanded it to affect all US global health projects. According to this Buzzfeed article, Trump’s order applies HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; some gender-based violence prevention programs; maternal and child health; nutrition; infectious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases; and foreign projects of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.
One might be confused as to how organizations not specifically associated with abortions, like Planned Parenthood, might be affected by this. Geeta Rao Gupta, a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and previous director of UNICEF, provided a relevant example in a quote to Slate:
“If they’re giving advice to women on what to do if they’re pregnant and HIV positive, giving them all the options that exist, they cannot now receive money from the U.S.”
Simply put- even a mere abortion referral gives the U.S. the power to cut off all funding to an organization, funding providing medication and aid to women across the globe that otherwise might not be able to get it. The wide reach of Trump’s policy also amplifies the “chilling” effect, the pressure organizations feel to avoid activities that might be considered illegal so their funds won’t be cut off, even if said activities are completely within the law. When George W. Bush renewed the policy in 2000, there was confusion around whether USAID grant recipients could treat hemorrhaging pregnant women, because the hemorrhage might have been caused by a self-induced abortion. Women coming in bleeding would be turned away due to the fear of this rule.
In 2001, Bush explicitly added an exception for post-abortion care to the policy. It’s unclear whether Trump’s version of the regulation will honor that exception.
The policy has been widely condemned and is expected to have dangerous effects on the livelihoods of women around the world. Public health research suggests women who want to end their pregnancies will do so, regardless of whether abortion is legal or US aid is in place. The rule will most likely increase the rate of unsafe abortions, supported by the stats of this 2011 study showing that abortion rates increased by about 40% the last time the gag rule was in place. The WHO also says the global gag rule causes about 13% of maternal deaths. Marie Stopes International (MSI), one of the U.S.’s biggest aid receivers, estimates there will be an additional 2.2 million abortions globally each year — 2.1 million of which will be unsafe, MSI vice president Newman-Williams said. In countries most heavily affected by the policy, the use of contraception decreased, and the odd’s of an unsafe abortion was two times higher than before the policy was put in place. Now, organizations like MSI who refuse to take away abortion as an option for women in need, will lose about 20% of their funding that could’ve been used for issues like HIV and AIDS. Health care prices can also skyrocket with the increase in unwanted and complicated pregnancies and just the sheer rise in births.
In a statement, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, called the move a showcase of Trump’s “dangerous obsession with rolling back reproductive rights” and said the reinstatement of the rule “ignores decades of research, instead favoring ideological politics over women and families’ futures.” Sheehan promised to introduce a bill repealing the rule on Tuesday, a day after Trump’s reinstatement.
I hope that she pulls through on this promise.
It is a true tragedy to see hard-working organizations, who make such large steps everyday in the fight for overall health, to have their work set to be outdone by Trump’s mindless policy. While I applaud the feminists of our country fighting for the rights of American women, I encourage them to improve themselves as supporters of equality. Expand your minds white feminists- here is a rule targeting the reproductive rights of women around the world, disabled women, sick women, women of color, women who might not look like you but deserve all the same rights that you do.
Let the fight against this oppressive administration continue.
