Global Gag

When the United States elected Donald Trump as our 45th president, many people were wooed by his "Make America Great Again" slogan. These four simple words became extremely polarizing for their America-centric meaning and xenophobic undertones. One of his more recent actions was reinstating the global gag rule, which is essentially a ban on the United States providing federal funding to other nations' providing abortions and other female health services.

Donald Trump's stance on abortion has fluctuated greatly in the past. According to Business Insider, Trump stated he was pro-choice in 1999, but came out as pro-life in 2011. As he narrowed his scope in his mission to become president, he stated he was pro-life with exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or risk to the mother's life. One of his most notable statements was that women who got abortions should be punished - which he quickly took back.

The Global Gag Rule, or Mexico City Policy, is defined as a policy that restricts United States' funding non-governmental organizations that provide family planning and female health services if one of those services is abortion. According to GenderHealth.org, the policy was first introduced in 1984 by President Reagan, and the plan explicitly states that these NGOs that do provide family planning funding “cannot inform the public or educate their government on the need to make safe abortion available, provide legal abortion services, or provide advice on where to get an abortion [but] policy allows for exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment”

Historically, Republican presidents have reinstated this gag rule ever since it was first proposed since many Democratic presidents have rolled it back, saying that it was unfair. It had been bounced back and forth and is now being reinstated by President Trump in accordance with his beliefs toward “Making America Great Again” and his conservative view towards abortion.

The repercussions of this act, especially in today's climate, could be significant. According to the Huffington Post, the paradigm of opinions toward premarital sex are shifting from condemnation to acceptance. The article analyzed Pew Research data and came to the conclusion that there was a positive correlation between higher GDP and acceptance towards premarital sex, as well as a positive correlation between number of women in the workforce and acceptance towards premarital sex. As many third world countries develop greater equality in the workforce for men and women, we can assume that this trend would follow – greater premarital sex occurring, and with the gag rule in place, this creates an atmosphere of uncertainty because of issues that are bound to occur in cases of sex – diseases or pregnancies, either wanted or unwanted.

In Nepal, one country that benefited from the United States’involvement, there is evidence to show that cutting funding to reproductive health services led to an increase in the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions also did not decrease – but one can imagine the number of undocumented abortions and therefore unsafe abortions also increased. The United States also provided funding to family planning organizations in Africa and other Asian nations. By cutting these funds from numerous organizations, the gag rule does not just “stop abortions” it also stops education programs about many horrible phenomena still occurring in developing countries.

According to an article by Nawal M Nour, MD, MPH, an additional issue that arises from cutting this funding is that there are health issues that do not exist currently in the United States – like certain diseases or lack of certain vital nutrients exist in specific parts of the world. Other issues, like maternal mortality, female genital mutilation, child marriage, and HIV/AIDS are still prevalent in developing countries. The education programs that the now defunded NGOs used to have were providing information to women about their rights under the law and how to escape antiquated practices like female genital mutilation and child marriage. Additionally, these cut services provided testing for different diseases, like HPV and Papanicolau, and will no longer be provided in these countries, which could lead to more outbreaks of diseases.

The implementation of this global gag rule will have devastating effects in numerous ways, on global feminism and also on the health of numerous men and women in developing countries. It also marks the beginning of an era of a more restrictive administration toward women’s reproductive health. Although it could be an element of Trump’s goals to reallocate funds towards programs in the United States, the US’s role as a world power has had the responsibility of overseeing programs in other nations with lesser economies or less developed health systems. However, even though the United States has the power to cut off these programs, they should have a plan in place to slowly pull their programs out and allow the communities to develop programs of their own.