The Trump administration will broaden the “Mexico City policy,” which bars recipients of foreign aid from promoting abortion, to include what President Trump refers to as “woke ideology” — a change that will have a sweeping effect on more than $30 billion in foreign assistance, especially on programs that aid transgender people.
First enacted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the policy has traditionally been aimed at keeping family planning organizations that receive U.S. tax dollars from performing or even discussing abortion — even with their own money. It has typically been put into effect under Republican presidents and rescinded by Democrats.
The new policy, in three separate rules set to be issued Friday by the State Department, will extend that prohibition to include “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “gender ideology,” according to a senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity to describe the move before it was officially announced.
The policy will apply to both foreign and U.S.-based nongovernmental organizations, but also to international organizations, the official said.
It is timed to coincide with the annual March for Life, which brings thousands of abortion opponents to Washington each year on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s since-overturned 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal nationwide. Vice President JD Vance will speak at the march, also scheduled for Friday.
The new rules flow out of a series of executive orders Mr. Trump issued right after he took office a year ago. Also on Thursday, the Trump administration completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. Taken together, the moves amount to a one-two punch for global health.
“This is so incredibly cruel,” Keifer Buckingham, managing director for the Council for Global Equality, which advocates L.G.B.T.Q. rights overseas, said in a text message. “It really is about forcing governments or NGOs or international organizations to sign on to an extreme ideological agenda, even denying that transgender or nonbinary people EXIST, just to get US funds to provide what is often lifesaving services or programs.”
Federal law already bans the use of taxpayer dollars to support abortion services abroad. But Mr. Reagan went one step further in 1984, blocking foreign aid to nongovernmental organizations that discuss abortion as part of family planning services, or advocate abortion rights, even if those groups are not using American tax dollars to do so.
Opponents quickly dubbed the policy the “global gag rule.” Anti-abortion groups, which applaud Mr. Trump’s expansion of the rule, say the president has a right to determine how U.S. tax dollars are spent.
“Far from being any kind of gag rule, you are free to talk however you wish if you’re paying for it, but you can’t ask us to pay for your speech,” said Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the group Students for Life of America, adding, “We don’t want to invest in abortion.”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy for The Times from Washington. A former congressional and White House correspondent, she focuses on the intersection of health policy and politics.
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