The Conversation: Abortions rise worldwide when U.S. cuts funding to women’s health clinics, study finds
Yana Rodgers, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University

“Fulfilling Republican efforts to ‘defund Planned Parenthood,’ the Trump administration announced on Feb. 22 it would end federal funding to health providers that perform abortions. This new ruling is the domestic version of the ‘global gag rule’ [otherwise known as the Mexico City policy] that Trump imposed in 2017. It cuts U.S. global health funding from organizations abroad that perform — or even talk about — abortions, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation. … Supporters of the global gag rule say defunding abortion providers will reduce abortions. However, researchers from Stanford University in 2011 found that this U.S. policy actually made women in sub-Saharan Africa twice as likely to have an abortion. My new study, published in November 2018, confirms those findings in Africa and shows that the global gag rule had an even greater effect in Latin America. … Since Trump reinstated the global gag rule in 2017, health workers in developing countries have reported drastic reductions in the availability of contraception, teen sex education, and family planning services…” (3/4).