By Ila Ananya
When Donald Trump won the elections, there was extremely depressing news of women everywhere in the United States lining up outside gynaecologist offices. Some of my male friends decided this was an overreaction, but on Monday, Trump, surrounded by a group of smugly smiling white men proved just why women chose to do this. He signed an anti-abortion executive order, also known as the Mexico City policy or the global gag rule, which prohibits giving US funding to international non-governmental organisations that offer abortions, or even include abortion in their advice to women. It’s the same order that Obama had overturned in 2009.
This is even if US dollars are not used for abortion-related services. Trump’s decision — even if everyone knew it was coming — is a big deal, because the United States reportedly spends around 600 million dollars a year on international assistance for family planning programmes. This is even though none of this money is allowed to be spent on funding abortions outside of the US.
Sean Spicer, the White House spokesperson told reporters, “He [Trump] wants to stand up for all Americans, including the unborn, and I think the reinstatement of this policy is not just something that echoes that value, but respects taxpayer funding as well.” It’s just great that the argument of tax payer money is being used when the question is about women’s bodies and their lives.
The results of this global gag rule mean that, as abortion advocacy groups say, “When the policy has been in effect, health providers have been forced to fire staff, reduce their services, or even close their clinics altogether. Thousands of women lost access to family planning and reproductive health services from trusted local providers — sometimes the only provider of these services in their community — putting them at risk of unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion.”
But Trump hasn’t been the first president to do this in the US. Previously, in 1984, Ronald Reagan first implemented this global gag rule. And while Bill Clinton repealed it when he took office, George W Bush reinstated it as soon as he took office again. This has made it all the more evident that governments around the world have always been interested in controlling women’s bodies — in India it has recently been by rolling out harmful DMPA birth control injections for women — particularly in terms of controlling contraceptive methods and their availability.