‘You can’t just remove the damage of the last four years’

Reproductive rights groups cautiously welcome Biden's reversal of Trump's abortion access restrictions

By Kara Fox and Nicole Gaouette, CNN
Sat January 30, 2021

For more than four years, countries that rely on American foreign aid have been reeling from the profound impact that Donald Trump's reinstatement of the Mexico City policy has had on women.

The policy, known as the "global gag rule" among opponents, prevents non-government organizations that provide abortions, give counseling about abortions, or advocate for safe access to abortion from receiving US funding.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/30/world/biden-abortion-mexico-city-policy-intl/index.html


Kenyan Reproductive Health Nurse Explains The Chilling Impact Of The Global Gag Rule & How She Defends Women’s Health

November 5, 2020

Since Ronald Reagan first implemented the Mexico City Policy in 1984, also known as the “Global Gag Rule”, every Republican President elected since then has signed this into law. The policy blocks U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provide abortion counseling or referrals, advocate to decriminalize abortion, or expand abortion services.

But when Trump took office in January 2017, two days after the historic Women’s March, he not only signed the GGR (which President Obama did not), he implemented an expanded version which impacted not just family planning NGOs, but all U.S. global health assistance, increasing the amount of money affected by the policy from roughly $600 million to about $12 billion in estimated planned funding in 2018. The new iteration covered work unrelated to family planning, including projects related to HIV/AIDS, nutrition, malaria, water and sanitation, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Continued: https://www.girltalkhq.com/kenyan-reproductive-health-nurse-explains-the-chilling-impact-of-the-global-gag-rule-how-she-defends-womens-health/


Women in Kenya Are Using Knitting Needles to End Their Pregnancies. Blame Donald Trump.

The president has given fringe anti-abortion groups unprecedented influence.

OCTOBER 8, 2020
By NEHA WADEKAR

On a rainy morning in May 2019, Dr. John Nyamu was attending to patients on the cluttered first floor of an office building in downtown Nairobi when he heard raucous shouts from down the street. A caravan of protesters was winding toward him, a few hundred people teeming in the streets, bellowing through loudspeakers, and stopping traffic.

As the crowd reached his building, Nyamu, a well-known gynecologist who performs abortions in a private clinic, peered through his window at the protesters below to make out what they were saying. It turns out they were targeting him. “Abortion is murder! Abortion must go! Nyamu must go!” Some held signs with photos of mutilated fetuses. Others clutched baby-size cardboard coffins with crosses on them.

Continued: https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2020/10/08/abortion-kenya-knitting-needles-donald-trump/


KENYA – The global gag rule on abortion and reproductive health care must be repealed

The global gag rule on abortion and reproductive health care must be repealed

By Ami Bera and Melvine Ouyo, Special to The Sacramento Bee
February 19, 2020

Last month marked three years since President Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the Global Gag Rule, jeopardizing life-saving global health programs and making it even harder for people in developing countries to access crucial reproductive health care – care that we know saves lives.

Under this abhorrent policy, health care providers are barred from receiving desperately-needed financial assistance if they offer abortion-related services or counseling – even if they offer those services with non-U.S. funds.

Continued: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article240397506.html


Coca-Cola and quacks

Coca-Cola and quacks
How Kenya's restrictive abortion laws are fuelling infanticide

Kenya is in the grip of an infanticide crisis – driven by poverty, unwanted pregnancies and muddled abortions laws. Adrian Blomfield discovers the deadly consequences of restricting reproductive rights. Pictures by Simon Townsley

November 25, 2019

On the streets of Nairobi, out of official earshot, nurses say there are different ways of killing unwanted babies.

Some young mothers feed them Coca-Cola instead of breast milk to make their organs collapse. Ginger beer is said to work just as well. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, are left to die in pit-latrines, rivers and rubbish dumps.

Or there is always the option of getting someone else to do the deed. Quacks on the back streets of urban slums are often only too willing to end a late-term pregnancy by inducing a living infant and then finishing it off with a blow to the head.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/infanticide-in-kenya/


Kenya – ‘Dumped babies are just the tip of the iceberg’: The deadly consequences of curbing reproductive rights

‘Dumped babies are just the tip of the iceberg’: The deadly consequences of curbing reproductive rights

Louise Donovan and Nasibo Kabale, in Nairobi
13 November 2019

It’s a hot mid-August morning, and Lydia Wambui’s bright green overalls are soaked. She’s standing knee-deep in Nairobi River, using a metal rod to catch rubbish lazily flowing down its murky waters.

“Sewage, bottle-tops, needles – people chuck everything in here,” she says, wiping sweat off her forehead before adding: “We also keep finding babies.”

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/dumped-babies-just-tip-iceberg-deadly-consequences-curbing-reproductive/


Pregnant Women Overseas Lose Access to Pre-Natal Care Due to Trump’s ‘Global Gag Rule’

Pregnant Women Overseas Lose Access to Pre-Natal Care Due to Trump's 'Global Gag Rule'

By Brian Padden
July 18, 2019

WASHINGTON - Medical providers say some pregnant women in developing countries have lost access to prenatal health care because of the Trump administration’s expanded “global gag rule” that cut aid to international organizations involved in abortion-related activities.

A recent study in the Lancet Global Health journal also reports that abortions actually increased in Africa when these aid restrictions were enacted in the past.

Continued: https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/pregnant-women-overseas-lose-access-pre-natal-care-due-trumps-global-gag-rule


USA – I’ve witnessed the devastating effects of Trump’s global gag rule. Congress must act.

I’ve witnessed the devastating effects of Trump’s global gag rule. Congress must act.

By Melvine P. Ouyo
February 8, 2019

First, do no harm.

It’s a principle that has stood the test of thousands of years of practicing medicine. A principle that transcends politics and partisanship and cuts to the core of what medical providers do every day: provide. Help people.

Continued; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/08/ive-witnessed-devastating-effects-trumps-global-gag-rule-congress-must-act/?utm_term=.01b4c98e682c


The Effects of the Global Gag Rule Are Being Felt Everywhere

The Effects of the Global Gag Rule Are Being Felt Everywhere

Jul 2, 2018
Melvine Ouyo & Alexa Henderson

In Kenya, desperate pregnant women and girls who lack access to safe medical care because of funding cuts under Trump’s global gag rule are turning to "curtain clinics” to terminate their pregnancies. Such clinics are run by people who aren’t nurses or doctors.

The fallout of Trump’s global gag rule is upon us. Not a single week passes in Kenya without devastating media reports documenting how patients are going without needed reproductive health care and medical intervention thanks to the U.S. policy restricting funds to international clinics that discuss pregnancy termination regardless of the circumstance. The global gag rule is forcing health providers to either ignore that challenge or lose desperately needed aid for other services.

Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2018/07/02/effects-global-gag-rule-felt-everywhere/


Kenyan clinic loses Sh200m in US aid over Trump abortion policy

Kenyan clinic loses Sh200m in US aid over Trump abortion policy

Thursday May 3 2018
By KEVIN J. KELLEY

Kenya's longest-established family planning clinic has lost 60 per cent of its budget for defying a Trump administration policy forbidding women's health providers from offering information or services related to abortion.

Family Health Options Kenya has been forced to close one of its 14 clinics and curtail services at others due to US funding cuts amounting to Sh200 million ($2 million), Washington-based National Public Radio (NPR) reported on Wednesday.

Continued: https://www.nation.co.ke/news/Kenyan-clinic-choked-by-Trumps-gag-rule/1056-4543310-lrggua/index.html