Trump Brings Back 'Global Gag Rule' on Abortion, Restricting Reproductive Health Care for Millions

Despite lying throughout the 2024 campaign trail that he wouldn't further restrict abortion rights, during the first week of his presidency, Donald Trump worked quickly. The new administration appears to have eliminated reproductiverights.org, scrapped any useful mention of abortion from the Health and Human Services Department's website, scaled back key protections for abortion clinics against violent protesters, and, late on Friday, he reinstated the so-called "global gag rule" on abortion aid via executive order—one of the more devastating yet lesser-known, recurring Republican policies. Trump is expected to take similar action against domestic reproductive health organizations in the near future.

The global gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, will block federal funding for global organizations that educate about, offer referrals for, or even discuss abortion. Organizations that receive U.S. aid can't “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning," which will impact their ability to provide a broad range of services including contraception, HIV treatment, child nutrition, water sanitation, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Every Republican president starting with Ronald Reagan in 1984 has enacted the global gag rule via executive order, only for the next Democratic president to rescind it. But under GOP administrations, family planning clinics around the world have lost significant funding, which can force them to shutter, sometimes to fatal consequences for the global communities they serve. Marie Stopes International (MSI), a global organization that offers contraception and abortion services in 36 countries, told NPR in 2017 that it had to shutter 21 of its 22 mobile contraceptive clinics in Madagascar. In a release shared with Jezebel last week, MSI says it expects to lose $14 million in funding under the reinstated rule, which could result in 2.4 additional unplanned pregnancies.

“Contrary to its stated intent of 'protecting life,' research has proven that this policy does the opposite. When women and girls are denied fundamental reproductive health services then unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths increase. Signing [the gag rule] would be a violation of our mission to protect women and save lives, and we can never agree to these conditions," Carole Sekimpi, senior Africa director at MSI Reproductive Choices, said in a statement. "It’s heartbreaking that it is happening again."

Before Trump signed the gag rule within three days of taking office in 2017, the policy previously only affected organizations focused on providing family planning services—but the Trump administration expanded the scope of the rule significantly to apply it to organizations that offer family planning services on top of a range of other services, prompting activists to re-dub it the "global gag rule." The policy used to affect up to $600 million of international aid, but under Trump, the expanded gag rule affects $12 billion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think.

International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), for example, expects its work to be heavily impacted. Again. In 2018, the organization warned that budget cuts from the Trump administration would yield "3.3 million more abortions, most of which will be forced to occur in unsafe settings, 15,000 more maternal deaths, and 8 million more unintended pregnancies." Shortly after Trump won reelection in November, the organization estimated they'll lose $60 million in funding. One of IPPF’s member organizations, the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA), has been providing indispensable health care to pregnant people and children in Gaza for years, and crucially through the last 15 months amid the Israeli-led genocide. 

In a statement, Rachana Desai Martin, chief government & external relations officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, pointed to the impacts the global gag rule had during Trump's first term: "There was a spike in pregnancy-related deaths, reproductive coercion, and gender inequality worldwide. Many clinics and health programs shuttered, leaving vulnerable populations with nowhere to get birth control, pregnancy care and other vital health services."

Avril Benoît, the CEO of Doctors Without Borders USA, cautioned in a statement that the global gag rule will have "deadly consequences" for the global community, while Sarah Demant, senior director of programs at Amnesty International USA, echoed that "President Trump has purposely put the lives of millions of women, girls and others who can get pregnant at risk and has thrown global reproductive healthcare into complete chaos."

In Trump’s first term, about a year in, he proposed new rules for Title X, a federal program that funds sexual and reproductive health care like contraception, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for STIs, and more. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about four million Americans rely on Title X to access this health care. Under the domestic gag rule, Title X clinics are forbidden from even telling patients about abortion options—even if the clinic doesn’t provide the service themselves. The free speech hypocrisy speaks for itself.

During Trump’s first presidency, the domestic gag rule halved Title X capacity: According to Guttmacher, about 1.6 million Americans reportedly lost access to Title X-supported reproductive care. The domestic gag rule resulted in over 400 Planned Parenthood clinics and over 600 non-Planned Parenthood clinics across the country losing federal funding. The same policy also allowed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to apply for Title X funding, even though many of these facilities don’t provide actual health care; they exist solely to ensnare abortion seekers, deceive and manipulate them into not getting abortions, and surveil and collect their medical information.

On the campaign trail, Vice President JD Vance said he and Trump support “defunding Planned Parenthood,” so, watch this space for even worse news soon!