Presidents have played politics with womenâs lives for long enough.
By Sarah Wildman
Jan. 31, 2021
Activists from the Population Connection Action Fund projected a message onto the Trump International Hotel, to protest the Global Gag Rule in 2019.Credit...Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse â Getty Images
Mexico City Policy, known more commonly to critics as the global gag rule, which denies U.S. aid to nongovernmental organizations if they advocate for, suggest or even mention the word abortion.
Mr. Bidenâs move was not a surprise. Since the rule was established under Ronald Reagan in 1984, Republican presidents have sustained the policy, and their Democratic counterparts have repealed it. The gag rule does not simply project Americaâs culture battles onto the lives of women and families in far-flung communities across the world â though it very much does that â but also creates what Simon Cooke, the C.E.O. of the U.K.-based womenâs health organization MSI Reproductive Choices, calls a âyo-yoâ effect which badly strains global health care distribution.