The Freedom From Religion Foundation condemns President Trump’s cruel decision to reimpose the draconian “global gag rule” — devastating reproductive and maternal health worldwide.
In one of his initial acts as president, Trump’s first administration used the religious justification of “protecting life in global health” while imposing the gag rule, when, in fact, it endangered the lives of millions of women and girls. The global gag rule prevents international organizations that receive U.S. global health assistance funds from providing information, referrals or services for legal abortion care.
Additionally, under this gag rule, all international groups that take U.S. funding cannot advocate for access to abortion health care in their own country — even if they use their own funds to do so. Such organizations most often have programs that offer a wide array of health services, such as contraception, prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, combating malaria and improving maternal and child health.
Prior to Trump’s first term, the gag rule only affected U.S. family planning resource funds. However, in 2017, Trump expanded the rule to include all U.S. global health assistance funds, increasing the amount of funding affected from approximately $600 million to about $12 billion. FFRF submitted a formal public comment opposing Trump’s expansion.
Since President Reagan first introduced it in 1984, every Republican president has imposed the gag rule, while every Democrat has lifted it. The gag rules force international health care providers to choose between U.S. global funding and the ability to provide their clients with comprehensive reproductive health options. This stifling of reproductive rights endangers millions of women and girls worldwide, and not just by further restricting global abortion rights.
A National Academy of Sciences study estimates that Trump’s imposition of the gag rule from 2017 to 2021 led to 108,000 deaths of children and mothers in developing countries. One global women’s health nonprofit, MSI Reproductive Choices, said that Trump’s gag rule cost it $120 million. These funds were enough to prevent 6 million unintended pregnancies and 20,000 maternal deaths.
As part of his first term’s anti-abortion agenda, Trump also ended U.S. funding for the U.N. Population Fund, calling it complicit in abortion care. The Fund aims to improve reproductive and maternal health worldwide and is notably the biggest provider of contraceptives in the developing world. President Biden restored funding after taking office, but Trump reinstated funding restrictions last week. Eliminating funding for the U.N. Population Fund and reinstating the gag rule will only lead to the closure of clinics that provide free contraceptives, cervical cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, penalizing health care in general.
The gag rule will not end international abortion or “protect life.” A Stanford study found instead that the gag rule was associated with increased abortion rates, suggesting that reduced financial aid for organizations that support family planning because they also support abortion health care “may have led women to substitute abortion for contraception.” And, as always, when harsher restrictions on abortion are imposed worldwide, women and girls will still find ways to terminate pregnancies, often in unsafe conditions.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has warned, “If Trump cuts funding for women’s health to ‘protect life,’ the result will be death.” Kristof asks: “Don’t the lives of women and girls matter?”
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor adds, “As we’ve long remarked, anti-abortion religious zealots have made it clear they care about human life all the way from conception . . . to birth.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national association of 40,000 members whose purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Photo by Aiden Frazier on Unsplash
