On Jan. 23, Vice President JD Vance launched a new plan to “promote families and human flourishing.” But rather than being, as he claimed, “pro-life,” these rules will threaten the lives of people around the world, especially women and people who don’t fit into the administration’s narrow, unscientific categories of gender.
The first of the new restrictions on foreign aid announced by Vance extends the existing Mexico City Policy prohibitions on abortion funding, to encompass not just global health assistance but all non-military foreign assistance — including U.S.-based nonprofits and government-to-government funding.
Known to critics as the “Global Gag Rule,” recipients receiving funding from the U.S. government are prohibited even from tapping other donors to provide information or education regarding women’s health. This expansion will severely limit access to abortion and the full range of sexual and reproductive health care, even in emergencies.
Decades of social science and health research show that curtailing access to safe abortions does not reduce abortions; it just makes them more dangerous. A 2017 World Health Organization report found that unsafe abortions already account for as much as 13.2% of maternal mortality worldwide. The Trump administration’s new rules will increase that needless suffering and death.
The administration’s grandstanding discounts the unimaginable suffering from unsafe abortions — women bleeding out in front of their small children or dying alone in a filthy hideaway, overcome by a raging blood infection. The Global Gag Rule also undermines crucial health systems, forcing physicians and health workers to violate their professional oaths by staying silent when they see risks or to delay actions until it is too late to save their patients.