Ahead of Trump’s second term, 100+ international civil society organizations have joined together to demand the permanent repeal of the global gag rule.
On the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Trump proclaimed he was “proud to be the most pro-life president in U.S history.” As he boasted on social media, this self-conferred accolade undoubtedly reflected his greatest antiabortion ‘accomplishment’—namely, that “50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade … and for the first time put the Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position over the Radicals that are willing to kill babies even into their 9th month, and beyond.”
As well documented by the media, Trump’s second term presents a grave domestic threat to essential sexual and reproductive healthcare, which has already been decimated across wide swaths of the country. Considerably less attention, however, has been paid to the devastation his presidency will unleash worldwide when he undoubtedly reinstates the global gag rule, as it is anticipated he will do as a “day one” priority.
The global gag rule—as opponents refer to it because it “silences what organizations can even say about abortion in their own countries”—is an virulent U.S anti-abortion policy inaugurated by President Ronald Reagan at the second International Population Conference in Mexico City in 1984 (hence, it is often referred to as the Mexico City Policy). The gag rule is anchored in the foundational principle that “U.S. support for family planning programs is based on respect for human life, enhancement of human dignity, and strengthening of the family,” thereby making abortion an unacceptable “element of family planning programs.”
Trump’s fierce antiabortion ideology … is about to be unleashed on both domestic and global fronts.
To this end, the gag rule bars foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from “performing” or “actively promoting” abortion as a “method of family planning … as a condition of receiving U.S. government global family planning funding.”
In addition to the outright ban on the provision of abortion services (subject to limited exceptions, such as for after-abortion care), the “active promoting” prohibition cuts an extremely wide swath, extending to, as set out in KFF’s “Mexico City Policy: An Explainer“:
- providing advice and information about and offering referral for abortion—where legal—as part of the full range of family planning options,
- promoting changes in a country’s laws or policies related to abortion as a method of family planning (i.e., engaging in lobbying), and
- conducting public information campaigns about abortion as a method of family planning.
Prior to the institution of the global gag rule, family planning aid recipients had been permitted to use “non-U.S. funds to engage in certain abortion-related activities,” so long as they “maintain[ed] segregated funds for U.S. assistance.”
Since its inception in 1984, the global gag rule has been repealed and reinstated by executive action based upon party affiliation. Most recently, following its reinstatement and expansion during Trump’s first term (discussed below), the gag rule was rescinded by President Biden—a step applauded by reproductive rights advocates as “an important first step towards righting the Trump administration’s tremendous wrongs impacting access to reproductive health, rights and justice.”
During his first presidential term, one of Trump’s earliest actions was the reinstatement of the global gag rule—a wholly expected move from a Republican president. However, red flagging what likely lies ahead, he also inaugurated an unprecedented expansion of the rule’s reach.
Renamed the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, Trump extended the antiabortion strictures of the global gag rule to virtually all U.S. global health grants, including those having absolutely nothing to do with family planning, such as projects related to water and sanitation, nutrition and the prevention of infectious diseases. He subsequently extended the rule to cover “sub-recipients of “gagged” organizations, even if they do not receive any U.S. foreign assistance” based upon their “association with an organization that did”—a move the Guttmacher Institute lambasted as a “stunning suppression of both the right to free speech and the practice of medicine.”
In anticipation of this devastating global attack on abortion access, over 100 international civil society organizations have joined together to urgently demand the permanent repeal of the global gag rule. Drawing upon research studies and the experience of “organizations working in diverse settings,” this call is rooted in the documented harms of the global gag rule—as a result of which, lifesaving health services have been dismantled in communities around the world, many of which already face systematic barriers to care. Clinics have been forced to close, outreach efforts to underserved populations have been eliminated, and people have lost access to contraception and many other essential health services, resulting in more unintended pregnancies, more unsafe abortions and more deaths.
In solidarity with “those opposing the global gag rule and those harmed by it,” this urgent call for a permanent end to the policy is a critical prerequisite for the advancement of “health, human rights, and gender equality across the globe.”
Fueling the sense of urgency, Project 2025 calls for the further expansion of the gag rule beyond foreign health aid to include “all foreign assistance, including humanitarian aid.” This expansion would increase the affected funding from about $7.3 billion to about $51 billion. Project 2025’s vision of an expanded global gag rule would also, for the first time, include foreign governments in addition to NGOs within its prohibitive sweep.
The further expansion of the global gag rule—which, as principal research scientist Beth Tully of the Guttmacher Institute, puts it, at its core is, “driven by an antiabortion ideology that is designed to both disrupt and coerce other countries’ health systems and civil societies into restricting the health and rights of people around the world”—would have devastating consequences. Critically, it “threatens even services such as antenatal care and stymies countries ambitions toward Universal Health Coverage and integrated primary health care.”
Given Trump’s track record when it comes the global gag rule, his close ties to Project 2025 (notwithstanding his disavowals), and his proud self-proclaimed legacy as the nation’s most “pro-life president,” these fears are very real. Only the permanent rescission of the global gag rule will jettison this impending threat to the sexual and reproductive rights and wellbeing of persons around the globe. In the interests, however, of journalistic transparency, tragically there is little hope that this goal will align with Trump’s fierce antiabortion ideology, which is about to be unleashed on both domestic and global fronts.
