Trump’s Abortion Policy Isn’t About Morality - It’s Coercion - Rolling Stone
Amid all the presidential scandals of the past week, it was easy to miss that the Trump administration vastly expanded the anti-abortion policy known as the “global gag rule.” But it’s big news, with significant consequences.
Days into his presidency, Trump and the GOP have already gone hard against reproductive rights
The global gag rule prohibits any U.S. foreign aid from going to organizations that provide, advocate for or even discuss safe abortion services. Under previous Republican administrations, the rule applied to approximately $600 million in funds for family planning. Under Trump’s expansion, the rule puts $8.8 billion for a range of programs addressing health issues like maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and Ebola in jeopardy.
This expanded gag rule is an economic attack aimed at preventing the poorest women in the world from obtaining or even learning about safe abortion services, which will inevitably result in increased mortality from unsafe abortion as well as collateral damage to poor people in need of other life-saving health services. It is a significant escalation in the broader campaign by U.S. abortion opponents to use economic coercion to stop women from obtaining safe abortions at home and abroad – a strategy abortion opponents have embraced because, after losing the legal battle decades ago, they have utterly failed to convince women that ending a pregnancy is immoral.
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