Reproductive rights groups are gearing up for the current Trump administration to implement extensions to the current global gag rule — but this time, it may go even further than the usual dominance over reproductive rights. Also known as the “Mexico City Policy” and first instated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the rule prohibits organizations from receiving U.S. funds if they promote “abortion as a method of family planning.”
According to AP News, the Trump administration is expanding this ban to include international and domestic organizations that advocate “gender ideology” as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. It will apply to other governments, multilateral institutions, and U.S.-based organizations as well.
The way the extension is designed could apply to nearly $50 billion of non-military foreign assistance. It includes a “flow down” restriction, which means that anyone who signs to accept the aid will have to ensure that their subgrantees are also compliant with the rule and its new extensions.
“So if there’s $50 billion of U.S. foreign assistance and humanitarian assistance is constrained, then partners within that system who are partners to those who sign would also be constrained,” Beth Schlachter, senior director of U.S. external relations at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries, explained to Salon. “It’s a massive, massive escalation.”
When President Donald Trump first took office in 2017, one of the very first executive orders was reinstating the global gag rule. Later in his presidency, the Trump administration expanded the rule to apply to all U.S. global health assistance. The ripple effects were greatly felt internationally. Health clinics for teenagers in Ethiopia, once supported by U.S. funding, shut down. An effort to include HIV testing in family planning in Kenya fell apart.
As detailed by the Guttmacher Institue last year, the first Trump administration’s global gag rule expansions had “devastating” impacts. It decreased access to abortion and contraceptive care globally. It also created a “chilling” effect among clinicians who were scared to share family-planning resources due to a fear of it affecting funding — even in countries with progressive policies on abortion. In 2021, the Biden administration rescinded the rule, but it was reinstated during Trump’s second term.
As for how it will work being applied to organizations that advocate “gender ideology” and DEI, Schlachter said there’s “no precedent.”
“There are vulnerabilities all over where the U.S. holds the purse and has people by the neck,” Schlachter said. “Some are willing participants, and others are going to be compelled because of this envelope of funding, or they don’t want to get in the crosshairs with tariffs.”
Guttmacher Institute estimates that 50 million women and girls have already been denied contraceptive care in low and middle-income countries globally. The defunding of USAID last year, is estimated to lead to 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030.
“This new radical policy threatens to aggravate the cumulative harms of earlier administration actions, undermining decades of bipartisan investment in global health and gender equality, and stripping resources from the world’s most vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ+ communities around the world,” Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of Federal Policy at the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement. “This global gag rule is about control and using foreign aid to impose a cruel anti-human rights ideology on the world.”
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Support Salon’s bold journalism. Annual members save 58%Indeed, experts say this is what the main mission is — to take the administration’s extreme agenda and spread it internationally. International groups have blasted the decision, with Amnesty International saying this expansion is “an assault on human rights. By targeting organizations that support DEI initiatives and recognize gender diversity, the Trump administration is deliberately deepening inequality and putting the lives of millions around the world at risk.”
“Not satisfied with forcing a dangerous and unpopular agenda on people here in the U.S., the Trump administration is exporting its attacks on health and rights abroad,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “In doing so, they’re expanding on their deadly anti-abortion playbook in an unprecedented weaponization of foreign aid that threatens the health and lives of countless women, girls, young people and LGBTQI+ people in communities around the world.”
