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OROne of Joe Biden’s first acts as president is expected to be overturning a U.S. foreign aid rule, which rights activists say has prevented millions of women around the world from having access to adequate health care. reproductive and sexual in the past four years.
Trump restored the so-called “global gag rule,” also known as Mexico City politics, on his first Monday morning in office in January 2017. The rule, first introduced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, means that if an organization receiving US government funding cannot engage in providing abortion services, counseling, or even advocating abortion law, even if it does so using other non-US funds.
Restoration of the rule was an expected move for a Republican administration, but in the following months it was expanded to make it unprecedented. Previously, the rule only applied to reproductive health funding, but now it applies to all public health funds, accounting for nearly $ 9 billion (£ 6.8 billion) annually in foreign aid. The new rule means that NGOs cannot receive money for sanitation, access to clean water or HIV / AIDS programs if they also run programs that offer abortion services or counseling.
“It is important not to underestimate the damage that has been done. This wasn’t your typical Republican administration, where some bad policies have returned and will now be canceled again, ”said Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity in Washington DC.
US Vice President Mike Pence, who has a long history of ultra-conservative stances on abortion, led the agenda. “Denying women access to contraception and abortion is critical to who it is and to the world it wants to create,” Sippel said.
Numerous reports have found that implementing the global gagging rule leads to an increase in the number of unsafe abortions and endangers women’s health. “Girls have lost lives just because of lack of access to services,” said Melvine Ouyo, former director of a clinic at Family Health Options Kenya, an organization that had to close five clinics after refusing to accept the new conditions. aid of the United States. “The impact of the global gag rule has been truly devastating and has been felt by most of the organization in Kenya,” he said.
Keifer Buckingham, senior policy advisor at Open Society Foundations, said the rule left thousands of organizations with a “horrible” decision: “We reject very lucrative US government money to continue providing life-saving care, or we take the money and the compromise on our values and the provision of reproductive health care? “
The Marie Stopes International organization, which works in 37 countries around the world, refused to adhere to the global gag rule in 2017 and therefore had to turn down $ 30 million a year in US funding. The organization estimates that for Trump’s entire term, these funds would have enabled her to serve 8 million women with the help of family planning, preventing 6 million unwanted pregnancies, 1.8 million unsafe abortions and 20,000 deaths. maternal.
Dr Carole Sekimpi, who runs the organization’s Uganda program, said she had to reduce the number of five mobile outreach teams in the wake of Trump’s 2017 order, until donors from different countries they did not intervene to fill the funding gap. But the biggest problem was that other local organizations stayed away from joint projects, fearful of losing their funding.
“Because the regulation is so complicated, and often the interpretation by the US government is pretty general, everyone wants to be safe,” he said.
Rights advocates hope a Biden administration would be able to pass a piece of legislation introduced in Congress last year, known as the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights (HER) Act, which would repeal the rule permanently.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris came out in support of the act last year. “The United States should never force non-governmental organizations to choose between receiving American aid and providing comprehensive reproductive health care to women around the world,” she said. It is not yet clear, however, whether the next administration will have the numbers to push the act through Congress.
In addition to the global gag rule, the Trump administration has also sought to lead a global push to promote so-called “family values” and restrict access to abortion alongside LGBT rights. In some cases, this rhetorical support may have been as damaging to the cause of women’s rights globally as financial penalties.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, the United States has defended the dignity of human life anywhere and anytime,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month at the signing ceremony of an anti-abortion document known as the Declaration of Geneva consensus. “He did it like no other president in history. We have organized an unprecedented defense for the unborn abroad “.
Nearly 30 governments, mainly of authoritarian states, have signed the document, in which the signatories “reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion”. Hungary and Poland were the only two EU members to sign. There have recently been huge protests in Poland over a constitutional ruling that would outlaw almost all abortions in the country.
“There are many governments out there that have been encouraged and strengthened by the past four years of the Trump administration which has pushed this rhetoric and will continue to push it globally,” Buckingham said.
However, in addition to acknowledging the damage done, there is also impatience for the beginning of a new era and a change of tone in the White House.
“We’ve done so much during the Obama administration, and I expect Biden really should do it in his early days so he can get these things back. I am so impatient and excited that things will quickly change for the better, ”Ouyo said.
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