Foreign Policy: The Global Gag Rule: America’s Deadly Export
“…Family planning advocates from Washington, D.C., to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia worry that Trump’s global gag rule will not only roll back many of the modest but critical gains African countries have made on safe abortion, but also the decade’s worth of progress in increasing family planning, decreasing maternal mortality, and promoting democracy and women’s rights more broadly. … Every year, despite increased access to safe abortion procedures, six million African women end their pregnancies unsafely, and 1.6 million are treated for complications. Africa has more abortion-related deaths than any other continent. … [F]or the past 30 years, the hand most obviously manipulating the landscape of reproductive rights in Africa has been the United States. America has injected its own uniquely volatile abortion politics, hindering the efforts of African governments and health workers to improve conditions for their people and subverting the ability of citizens of sovereign nations to openly debate abortion rights…” (Filipovic, 3/20).