PATTAYA, Thailand — For years, the biennial International Conference on Family Planning has mostly shied away from focusing on abortion.
But the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn a woman’s right to an abortion has galvanized the issue internationally, leading the more than 125 countries represented at an annual event last month billed as the “world’s largest gathering of family planning and reproductive health professionals” to wonder how the seismic change in U.S. policy will impact nations that receive U.S. global aid or look to the country for leadership.
“When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the countries catch a cold,” said Jedidah Maina, executive director at Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health, a Kenyan nonprofit. “This is what we are anticipating, that the changes that are happening in the U.S. will reverberate across the globe. Because most of the time, the U.S. is seen as progressive and is seen as the leader.”
