The Global Gag Rule

What’s the issue? On Trump’s 4th day in office, he reinstated the Mexico City Policy, also known as the global gag rule, which was originally enacted by Reagan in 1984 and had been most recently been repealed by Obama in 2009. The policy states that the US government can only give family planning aid to organizations that “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” This is widely interpreted to mean that organizations abroad cannot talk about abortion, including referring clients for safe abortions, and still receive US government funding. Trump further expanded the rule to apply to all global health assistance, including money for HIV and AIDS, Ebola, and Zika. It’s worth noting that there is a separate rule, the Hyde Amendment, stating that no US money can be used for abortions, so the global gag rule only targets organizations who are using non-US money to provide abortion counseling and services. The global gag rule doesn’t apply to US-based organizations because it would violate their first amendment rights.

Why do I care? As I argued in a previous blog about safe abortion in the United States, this rule will not reduce the number of abortions around the world, but rather will reduce access to safe abortion. Since the global gag rule has been applied and repealed multiple times in the past 30 years (always in a partisan manner), there is data to back this up. In 2011, Stanford researchers found that in the Sub-Saharan African countries that received the most US aid, abortions doubled following Bush’s reinstatement of the rule in 2001. Another 2011 study from the International Food Policy Institute found that abortions in rural areas in Ghana increased significantly following the implementation of the global gag rule. Moreover, the study found that the rule resulted in over 500,000 unintended births, and that these children had “significantly reduced height and weight for age, relative to their siblings.”

Not having access to safe abortion is very dangerous for women. 68,000 women a year die from unsafe abortion attempts. Unsafe abortion is the second leading cause of maternal mortality in Ghana, and accounts for 8% of all maternal deaths worldwide. Safe abortion is among the safest of all medical procedures, meaning these deaths are largely unnecessary and preventable.

Meanwhile, other health initiatives are harmed by the global gag rule. For example, when the global gag rule went into effect in 2001, Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana lost it’s USAID money for contraception, testing for pregnancy and HIV, STI treatment, and infertility management in rural areas. (Researchers speculate that cuts like these, which reduce access to contraception, are ultimately behind the rise in abortions seen after when the global gag rule is in effect). Organizations that rightly provide access to abortion as part of safe reproductive health services are denied money for other lifesaving measures, such as cervical cancer screening and treatment. Marie Stopes International, and NGO that will no longer receive US funding because of the global gag rule, performs cervical cancer screenings in rural areas that can save a woman’s life for $3. Marie Stopes estimates they will lose $30 million a year as a result of the global gag rule, which will result in the reduction of family planning services for 1.5 million of women living in the world’s poorest countries.

What to do if you care too:

1. Call your Congresspeople. Even though this was an executive order, you can still urge Congress to come out against it. Ask them to support the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (HER) Act, which would permanently repeal the global gag rule.
2. Donate to one or more of the many NGOs whose work will be impacted by the global gag rule. Some of my favorites are Marie Stopes International, Ipas, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Amref Health Africa.
3. Donate to Planned Parenthood Action, which is fighting against the global gag rule.
4. Learn more about how the global gag rule affects women’s health. I’ve linked to some of these articles above, but I highly recommend this Foreign Policy article and this primer from IPPF as good places to start. Or you can even just watch this 2 minute video from Planned Parenthood (made before Trump reinstated the rule).
5. Share your abortion story (if you are comfortable doing so). You can write an article, share on social media, or talk to others. As Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, explains, “Sharing your abortion story can be a powerful way to stand up for access to abortion care… Women in every country and all throughout history have sought ways to terminate pregnancies that are unwanted or mistimed. Shame and stigma are the weapons anti-abortion proponents use to keep women from speaking about their abortion experiences with each other.”