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Health groups around the world celebrate the end of a nefarious policy barring US funding to overseas aid organizations that facilitate or promote abortion, which was dropped by US President Joe Biden in a presidential memorandum Thursday.
Reproductive rights advocates are urging the new administration to go further and permanently repeal the Mexico City policy – known as the “global gag rule” – to prevent it from being reinstated by a future Republican president. This policy has been blamed for contributing to thousands of maternal deaths in developing countries over the past four years.
The gag rule prevents foreign organizations that receive US aid from using their own money to provide abortion information or perform abortions. First adopted by the Reagan administration in 1984, it was repealed by every Democratic administration and reinstated by all Republicans in the years that followed.
In a brief appearance in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon, Biden said he ended the policy as part of an effort to “protect the health of women at home and abroad.”
But Donald Trump went further than previous Republican presidents. The policy generally applies to family planning organizations. But the Trump administration has broadened the policy to include all global health programs, including programs that deal with HIV, nutrition, malaria and cholera.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a health policy research group, the broadening of the rule has increased the pool of aid funds it allocated from around $ 600 million to around $ 12 billion (8 , £ 7 billion).
“We can breathe,” said Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, of Biden’s plans to repeal the policy. “There is so much hope and optimism in Washington DC right now. We have a lot of work to do, but it’s so much better. “
The consequences of Thursday’s memorandum will reverberate from Washington to more than 70 countries, including some of the poorest places in the world, where essential women’s health operations were abruptly halted or scaled back after Trump restored power in January. 2017.
In Zimbabwe, a women’s health team led by Abebe Shibru of the MSI Reproductive Choices organization has cut operations by 60%. “We have reduced our reach from 700,000 women to around 300,000,” Shibru, who now heads the organization’s Ethiopian operations, told The Guardian.
“Women lacked information, they did not have access to family planning and, in turn, they were exposed to unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions, which contributed to higher maternal mortality.”
Zimbabwe’s teenage pregnancy rate has increased by 2% in the past four years, according to data from Unicef, a trend according to Shibru exacerbated by cuts resulting from the gag rule.
“We weren’t providing services to rural women, so they had no choice but to get pregnant against their will,” he said.
The pledge conferences drew hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from governments and private groups in an attempt to close the U.S. funding gap, but failed to close the total deficit.
An impact assessment of the rule released last year, a survey of health organizations in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Nepal, found a sector in “crisis” with confusion over what was banned and permitted using US aid, growing stigma around reproductive health services and widespread program closures and cuts.
Trump’s ban has also spawned a new wave of activism, including a new grassroots movement, SheDecides, which is pressuring policymakers around the world to commit to advocating for reproductive health rights and sexual.
Zara Ahmed, associate director of federal issues at the Guttmacher Institute, said repealing the gag rule “is just the first step to overturn [the US’s] current status as the world’s biggest barrier to reproductive health ”.
“We are pleased that the Biden-Harris administration is tackling the global gag rule … But let’s be clear, repealing the global gag rule is the bare minimum this administration can do to address the harm caused by the coercive and malicious approach of the previous administration towards foreigners. political, ”she said.
“The Biden-Harris administration can and must take a comprehensive approach to unraveling the dangerous, punitive and coercive policies that the outgoing administration has made into our foreign policy, and it must take action to tackle long-standing nefarious policies. like the Helms amendment.
The Helms Amendment has been widely misconstrued as a total ban on US funding used for abortion abroad when in fact it can be used to support abortion in cases of rape, incest or the life of a woman in danger. A bill to repeal it definitively was introduced last year.
On Thursday, the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights Act (Global Her Act) aimed at permanently repealing the global gag rule will be presented to Congress for the third time. The bill, co-sponsored by new vice president Kamala Harris, has received all-party support and is hopeful that it will pass.
“It’s not automatic and it won’t be easy, but we are starting from a very strong position to get the act done,” Sippel said. “If it is not the bill itself, but the language of the bill incorporated in another bill.” Getting rid of GGR is what we strive for. “
Sippel also called on the Biden administration to disavow the “Geneva Consensus Statement” – an anti-abortion policy promoted by Trump last year – to “signal to the world that abortion and LGBTQ rights and sexual rights and reproductive systems are important, and to declare it loud and clear. in the world”.
She added that some activists wanted the Biden administration to issue a formal apology for U.S. policies on sexual and reproductive health and rights over the past four years.
Biden also ordered the reinstatement of funding for the United Nations population fund, UNFPA, which Trump shut down.
The agency’s executive director, Natalia Kanem, praised the “huge” impact of this decision.
“Ending UNFPA funding has become a political football, far removed from the tragic reality it leads to on the ground. Women’s bodies are not a political bargaining chip, and their right to plan for pregnancy, to deliver safely and to live free from violence should be something we can all agree on, ”a she declared.
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