Opinion: It’s time for a permanent repeal of the global gag rule

Project 2025 , the policy agenda created by conservative activists and spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, envisions sweeping changes to U.S. government policy. Among them, buried within the more than 900-page document, is a vast expansion of the global gag rule , which family planning providers across the world warn threatens abortion rights worldwide, even in countries where it is currently legal.

Project 2025 refers to the rule by its more innocuous sounding name, the “ Mexico City Policy ,” but a gag order is what it is. It prohibits foreign non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from promoting, providing or referring patients to abortion services (with some exceptions for rape, incest and pregnancies that are life-threatening), or even advocating abortion law reform. Just mentioning the a-word would jeopardize their U.S. funding and their work, and for many non-profits, their very existence. So they aren’t allowed to talk about it.

First implemented 40 years ago this month during the Reagan administration, the global gag rule has become a political football, which subsequent Democratic administrations rescinded and subsequent Republican administrations reinstated.

The evidence shows that the this rule does not stop abortions from happening; it just makes them more dangerous. In effect, it only forces organizations worldwide to face an impossible choice between losing necessary funding or self-censoring and compromising patient care.

Countless clinics have been forced to shut their doors, thereby halting and even reversing progress on contraceptive use, which then leads to a surge in unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths. Pulling aid from NGOs that provide safe abortion or even abortion-related information stigmatizes abortion even in countries where it is legal. That drives it into the shadows and fuels unsafe abortion practices.

The Trump administration’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, instituted in 2017, was the most expansive version of the gag rule yet. Despite its negative outcomes , the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook calls for an executive order that would not only reinstate this policy but vastly expand it, so that the gag order attaches not only to global health assistance for foreign health NGOs but “to all foreign assistance, including humanitarian aid.”

The Trump campaign has not embraced Project 2025, saying he’s had “nothing to do with it.” In fact, recently Donald Trump has been flip-flopping on the issue of abortion to appeal to more voters — for example, opposing strict state bans and softening the abortion plank in the GOP platform. But sexual and reproductive health and rights advocates are terrified of the consequences if he were to follow the project’s agenda, and see no reason why he wouldn’t — especially with an organized movement of conservatives pushing him to do so.

If he did as they propose, it would affect about $51 billion in funding (based on current levels), including U.S. aid to multilateral organizations, foreign governments and U.S.-based NGOs. The proposal would strike an unprecedented blow to reproductive health care around the world, particularly in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where reproductive healthcare access is already limited, rendering many NGOs unable to fund contraceptives, HIV testing and treatment, infectious disease treatments, and vaccines.

Programs not directly affected by the global gag rule still experience a chilling effect due to confusion about what it does and doesn’t permit, research finds. If it were expanded as Project 2025 proposes, marginalized people — families living in poverty, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community — would suffer disproportionately.

Such unjust measures should have no place in U.S. policy. That’s why Congress should pass the Global HER Act , which would permanently repeal the global gag rule. In countries where abortion is legal, it would permit non-U.S. NGOs to use their own funds to provide safe and legal abortions, without losing U.S. funding for other programs.

Relying on temporary pauses of the global gag rule under Democratic administrations is not enough. The on-again, off-again nature of the current policy creates a convoluted environment for U.S. grantees that bedevils their programs even when the global gag rule is not in effect. Repealing the rule through legislative action is the only way to undo the far-reaching, long-lasting damage the rule has wrought over 40 years.

Beyond that, passing the Global HER Act would be a positive affirmation that the U.S. truly supports full realization of sexual and reproductive health and rights for everyone around the world. With the threat of an expanded global gag rule looming on the horizon, the time to affirm that is now.

Maniza Habib is research associate at the Population Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that supports reproductive health and rights. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

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