New Restrictions on Foreign Aid Would Cost Lives

WASHINGTON, D.C. – New foreign aid rules expected to be issued by the Trump administration that expand the  “global gag rule,” also known as the Mexico City Policy, that prohibits organizations receiving U.S. funds from “promoting abortion as a method of family planning,” and also apply President Trump’s earlier executive orders on “gender ideology” and “DEI,” represent an assault on the lives, health, rights, and dignity of women, LGBTQ+ communities and children around the world, health experts with Defend Public Health said today. The new rules  reportedly include new restrictions and now apply to all nonmilitary foreign aid.

“Any claim that these rules are ‘pro life’ flies in the face of all of the evidence and distracts us from the unconscionable harms these policies will cause,” said  Alicia Ely Yamin, J.D. M.P.H., Ph.D., Lecturer on Law and Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management, Harvard University and Co-chair of Defend Public Health’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Committee. “A study in Lancet Global Health estimated that the current global gag rule, coming on top of the Administration’s cuts to contraception, will lead to 14 to 16 million unsafe abortions.” And the defunding of USAID last year, which has been estimated to lead to 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030.

With these rules, for the first time the Trump administration would expand the global gag rule to all foreign aid, including humanitarian initiatives and programs run by U.S. based organizations, UN partners, and foreign governments. These gag rules impose sweeping limitations on how these organizations can engage in advocacy, information dissemination and education related to reducing maternal mortality, sexual and reproductive health, and reducing stigma and inequalities anywhere in the world, with any funding they receive. This would effectively coerce them into denying that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people exist, and undermine access to gender affirming care and information, as well as abortion care.  In many cases, such policies may be inconsistent with domestic law in the countries affected.

“This administration has conducted a relentless assault on the lives and dignity of women and LGBTQ+ communities, doing all it can to deny people the care they want and need,” said Defend Public Health member Susana Fried, Ph.D., who serves as co-director of the Just Futures Collaborative. “These new rules escalate that assault globally and will lead to massive suffering and needless death.”

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Defend Public Health is a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies. We believe that everyone has the right to what they need for a healthy life, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.
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