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global gag rule
Project 2025 Would Clamp Down on Global Abortion Rights, Too
What happens here matters to the planet. And while the world doesn’t vote in U.S. elections, there is, and will be, a rippling international impact.
Aug 29, 2024
It has been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court blew up federal protection for abortion, handing states the power to enact abortion bans and realizing the decades-long fever-dream of anti-rights actors.
Though a minority in the U.S., these extremists are loud and determined and won’t stop at our borders. Their plans for the future are outlined in Project 2025, which is already being implemented in the U.S. and abroad through anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ+ initiatives and would be fully executed if radical conservative forces reclaim the White House.
While political ads have featured Project 2025, no one is talking about the profound global impact of this manifesto. It would revive anti-gender U.S. human rights policy frameworks like the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights and the Geneva Consensus Declaration, favoring anti-rights alliances and networks with other authoritarian regimes. Essentially, this amounts to a gutting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the cornerstone of multilateral engagement for the past 76 years.
Imagine the impact globally if foetuses are given the same rights as women.
Project 2025 would also reinstate and expand the anti-abortion foreign policy known as the Global Gag Rule (GGR) to all U.S. foreign assistance. The rule, which was repealed in 2021, bans foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that receive U.S. global health assistance from providing legal abortion services or referrals and advocating for abortion law reform.
This implicates upwards of $51 billion, assuming U.S. foreign assistance holds somewhat stable, which is not guaranteed. The architects of this agenda would take a transactional and punitive approach to multilateralism, putting at risk the U.S.’ entire $18.1 billion contribution to the United Nations. Particularly vulnerable are the U.S.’ $122 million contribution to the World Health Organization and $32.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund—which aims to improve reproductive and maternal health worldwide—as well as other U.N. agencies that were targeted by the 2017-2021 administration.
“Protecting life,” according to Project 2025, “should be among the core objectives of the United States foreign assistance.” It goes on to urge the United States Agency for International Development to stop “supporting the global abortion industry.”
Project 2025 seeks not only to reinstate the GGR—which is also known as the Mexico City Policy—but to expand it so that it also applies to multilateral organisations, foreign governments, and U.S.-based NGOs. This would be the most significant expansion of the GGR since it was enacted 40 years ago during the Reagan administration.
This would all be on top of the existing Helms Amendment, which is particularly egregious and has been in place since 1973. Though the Helms Amendment prohibits only the use of U.S. foreign aid for abortion as a “method of family planning,” the policy has in many countries been used to implement a total ban on abortion services, including in instances of rape, incest, and life endangerment even in humanitarian settings.
Helms has contributed to maternal deaths that disproportionately impact women of colour, and to the stagnation of maternal mortality rates globally. According to a Guttmacher Institute analysis, there could be approximately 19 million fewer unsafe abortions and 17,000 fewer maternal deaths each year if Helms were repealed.
The thing is, Project 2025 isn’t something that will happen in the future. As Robin Marty, who runs a clinic that had been the main abortion provider in Alabama, told The New York Times: “...That is what is happening here. We are Project 2025.” And no matter who wins the election, Christian nationalism is growing within the United States, and this has global repercussions. We ignore it at our peril.
The fall of Roe v. Wade was an extreme example of what a very loud minority has been working toward for decades—limiting access to abortion, taking away bodily autonomy, and undermining human rights.
This same extremism is exported around the world and just like in the U.S., it is forcing people to endure even greater hardships just to access essential healthcare. It is costing lives, risking health, and compromising people’s futures. Imagine the impact globally if foetuses are given the same rights as women.
As former U.S. President Barack Obama said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week about the U.S. Presidential election: “The world is watching.”
Reproductive justice is a global, human rights issue, and the U.S. shares space with nearly 200 other nations. What happens here matters to the planet. And while the world doesn’t vote in U.S. elections, there is, and will be, a rippling international impact.
As we fight for reproductive freedom for all in the U.S., so must we fight for reproductive freedom for all around the world.
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Planned Parenthood Warns House GOP Appropriations Bills Attack Global Health
The "slate of dangerous and unpopular provisions" includes "eliminating the Title X family planning program and reinstating the Trump-era expanded global gag rule."
Jul 01, 2024
As the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives uses the appropriations process to promote the GOP agenda ahead of the November elections, Planned Parenthood Action Fund on Monday highlighted how the spending bills attack health within and beyond the United States.
"Once again, anti-abortion rights politicians in Congress are manipulating the federal appropriations process to push for a recycled slate of dangerous and unpopular provisions to block access to sexual and reproductive healthcare across the country and around the world," states the new Planned Parenthood Action Fund memo.
The document details anti-health policies in spending legislation for fiscal year 2025 that House Republicans have advanced recently, which include provisions "eliminating the Title X family planning program and reinstating the Trump-era expanded global gag rule."
The global gag rule bars U.S. government funding for foreign groups that provide information, referrals, or services for abortion care, or advocate for decriminalization or increasing access. It was initially implemented by former Republican President Ronald Reagan as the Mexico City policy, then reinstated and expanded by former President Donald Trump.
"In all, anti-abortion rights politicians continue to act in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people's personal healthcare decisions with attacks on abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care."
Despite Trump's ongoing legal battles, he is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November. Biden rescinded his predecessor's gag rule shortly after taking office in 2021. Reproductive freedom has been a key issue in not only that contest but races at all levels of U.S. politics this cycle, as GOP policymakers and candidates have set their sights on abortion care, birth control, and in vitro fertilization.
The gag rule was included in the appropriations bill for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, which the House on Friday passed 212-200. The only Democrat who voted in favor was Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington—who supports reproductive rights and has shared her own abortion story.
That bill would also "cap funding for international family planning and reproductive health programs at $461 million, a nearly 25% cut," and end funding for United Nations entities including the U.N. Population Fund, as the Planned Parenthood memo notes. It would also "restrict information about and access to gender-affirming care," and "maintain the Helms Amendment in addition to restrictions on abortion coverage for Peace Corps volunteers."
Speaking out against the legislation last week, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said that "much like last year, the fiscal year 2025 state and foreign operations bill resurrects the doomed isolationism of the early 20th century."
"For the sake of our national security, women's health globally, and our response to the climate crisis, Republicans must abandon this reckless and partisan path and join Democrats at the table to govern," declared DeLauro, who raised the alarm about House GOP appropriations proposals throughout June.
Taking aim at the labor, health and human services, and education legislation last week, she said that "in keeping with the majority's other partisan bills, this bill is chock full of dozens of poison pill riders, including multiple provisions that attack women's freedom and block abortion and reproductive healthcare services."
Specifically, as the new memo points out, it would interfere with postgraduate training in abortion care, impose the Hyde and Weldon amendments, restrict access to gender-affirming care, block Biden administration executive orders intended to boost abortion care access in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and eliminate funding for Title X family planning and teen pregnancy prevention programs while pouring money into abstinence-only-until-marriage initiatives.
It would also "defund" Planned Parenthood, preventing people in communities across the United States—particularly in rural and medically underserved areas—from accessing services including sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and birth control, as the memo outlines.
The recently introduced commerce, justice, and science bill would block most federal prisoners from attaining abortion coverage and prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from suing state or local governments over anti-choice laws, according to the memo. The financial services and general government legislation would reverse a District of Columbia law protecting workers from being fired for their reproductive healthcare choices, bar D.C. from using local funds to cover abortion care, and ban Federal Employee Health Benefits Program coverage of most abortions.
"In all, anti-abortion rights politicians continue to act in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people's personal healthcare decisions with attacks on abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care," the publication states.
The document also targets provisions in multiple recently passed spending bills focused on homeland security, the Pentagon, and veterans—including attacks on abortion and gender-affirming care for current and former service members and their families as well as anyone in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
"Anti-abortion rights lawmakers recently included similar measures in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—an annual must-pass bill," the memo highlights.
"Everyone deserves access to abortion and gender-affirming care, including service members and their families. But these lawmakers would rather play games with our fundamental rights in their attempt to control our bodies, lives, and futures."
After the mid-June NDAA vote, Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Alexis McGill Johnson said that "it's like Groundhog Day. Anti-abortion rights House members use must-pass bills as a vehicle to force through their deeply unpopular and dangerous agenda—again and again and again. Everyone deserves access to abortion and gender-affirming care, including service members and their families. But these lawmakers would rather play games with our fundamental rights in their attempt to control our bodies, lives, and futures."
The NDAA and spending bills aren't expected to pass the Senate—which is narrowly controlled by Democrats—in their current forms, but they send a message about what Republicans would prioritize if they fully reclaimed Congress and the White House.
"The majority's policy riders do not belong in appropriations bills, and like last year, we will defeat them," DeLauro said last month. "But it is disappointing that we are going through this charade again, just months after Republicans and Democrats voted for the 2024 appropriations bills."
This post has been updated to clarify that the memo was exclusively from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, not Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
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