Mobile Clinics Close in Madagascar as Aid Cuts Reduce Reproductive Health Services

Cuts to mobile clinic funding are leading to more unwanted pregnancies and unsafe births.

By Sarah El Gharib
October 30, 2025

When her mobile clinic shut down, Herisoa Bodo’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. A client due for implant removal reached out again and again. The appointment never happened — and she became pregnant.

Bodo, a midwife with Marie Stopes International (MSI) Madagascar since 2012, kept fielding calls long after outreach teams had been forced to suspend services. “Women kept calling because they couldn’t find care,” she said. Her routes cover Analamanga, the region surrounding the capital Antananarivo, where MSI deploys buses converted into clinics and 4x4 teams into rural communities. For many women, those visits are the only reliable chance to see a midwife.

Continued: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/madagascar-mobile-clinics-close-due-to-aid-cuts/

Global Trends in Opposition to Women’s Reproductive Autonomy

10 September 2025
International Confederation of Midwives

Sexual and reproductive health and rights are increasingly under threat. The Trump Administration in the United States has restricted dialogue about and access to contraception and safe abortion causing a global ripple effect. A troubling trend is emerging: other governments and international organisations are following suit by limiting funding and avoiding the language of reproductive rights.

Defunding SRHR – Global Impact and Consequences
The Trump Administration has overseen the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), withdrawn 500 million USD in global health funding, and terminated all US contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health. The result is the destabilisation of global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) initiatives, undermining progress toward gender equality, jeopardising the 2030 Agenda for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Continued: https://internationalmidwives.org/global-trends-in-opposition-to-womens-reproductive-autonomy/

The US denies UN agency funding to provide care to pregnant women around the world

Sunday 11 May 2025

The Trump administration continues to withdraw funding to American and international organisations that pursue policies on sexuality, diversity, and minority rights that contradict its isolationist and conservative agenda.

Since February, the US has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN reproductive and sexual health agency. On Thursday, the US announced that it intended to deny future funding to UNFPA by triggering the so-called Kemp-Kasten Amendment from 1985.

Continued: https://www.brusselstimes.com/health-news/1573960/the-us-denies-un-agency-funding-to-provide-care-to-pregnant-women-around-the-world

11.05.2025

News

funding cuts for abortion research

Kemp-Kasten amendment

A Post-Roe World?

Why Abortion Battles in America Won’t Halt Reform Abroad

By Nina Brooks, Minzee Kim, Elizabeth Heger Boyle, and Wesley Longhofer
June 16, 2022

Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court will release a ruling that is likely to overturn its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the case that affirmed a constitutional right to abortion. Reversing Roe would have profound implications for abortion access in the United States. Such a decision would also have ramifications abroad, particularly if a judicial ruling empowers future U.S. presidential administrations to push for restrictions on abortion in other parts of the world.

It is important, however, not to overstate U.S. influence on global abortion policy. The 1973 case was a landmark in allowing abortion access and served as an example to abortion advocates across the world. But in the 50 years since, the United States’ international messaging on abortion has been incoherent.

Continued: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-06-16/post-roe-world

Health Providers Worldwide Welcome Biden Reversal of Anti-Abortion Rule

By restoring funding cut off by his predecessor, President Biden ended four years of what abortion rights advocates called a concerted assault on women’s reproductive health in the developing world.

By Bhadra Sharma, Ruth Maclean, Oscar Lopez and Rick Gladstone
New York Times
Jan. 29, 2021

KATHMANDU, Nepal — When President Donald J. Trump scrapped tens of millions of dollars in aid to women’s health care providers around the world four years ago, the Family Planning Association of Nepal was forced to dismiss more than 200 people and close clinics in at least four parts of the country, one of Asia’s poorest.

Family planning education and birth-control distribution slowed or stopped in Nepal, which relies heavily on American financial assistance for public health programs. While abortion is legal in the country, the options for safe procedures were abruptly narrowed.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/world/asia/gag-rule-abortion.html

Abortion, LGBTI rights stir emotions on eve of Nairobi summit

Abortion, LGBTI rights stir emotions on eve of Nairobi summit

By Sara Jerving
12 November 2019

NAIROBI — In the lead up to a major global United Nations conference on reproductive and sexual health in Kenya, topics such as abortion, LGBTI rights, and contraceptives for adolescents have stirred controversy among faith communities and conservative advocacy groups. These reactions to the summit illustrate some of the challenges that health professionals face in expanding access to services for women and girls globally.

The Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, which started Tuesday, is being held 25 years after the first International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. At that Cairo summit, a landmark document was agreed upon that is credited with creating a women and girl-centered approach to family planning, focused on human rights and choice. The U.N. hasn’t convened a conference of this magnitude on sexual and reproductive health since the 1994 summit. Over 6,000 people from 165 countries are expected to attend this week.

Continued: https://www.devex.com/news/abortion-lgbti-rights-stir-emotions-on-eve-of-nairobi-summit-96018

Nepal: Cutting the lifeline

Cutting the lifeline
‘Protecting life’ under the Trump administrtion in the US will put more Nepali women's lives on the line

14-20 July 2017 #867
Nepali Times Buzz
Kate Ryan

Last week, governments and private partners gathered in London for the 2017 Family Planning Summit. The goal: to evaluate progress toward commitments to improve healthcare for more than 120 million women worldwide from 2012-2020.

More than half-way to 2020, only 30 million women have been reached. At a time when activities need to be sped up, the United States, the leading bilateral funder of family planning worldwide, just pulled out billions of dollars from organisations serving the world’s poorest nations, claiming they funded abortion services.

Continued at source: Nepali Times: http://nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/globe-rallies-to-aid-nepals-women,3841

Trump abortion crackdown risks stoking Nigeria’s population boom

Trump abortion crackdown risks stoking Nigeria's population boom

Cuts to US foreign aid enacted by the US administration mean that supplies of contraception are dwindling in Nigerian family planning clinics

Ruth Maclean in Maiduguri
Sunday 9 July 2017

A Nigerian nurse-midwife allows herself a small smile as she injects a tiny piece of plastic into a young woman’s arm.

In a way, Zainab Malut is doing herself out of a job through this intervention at a family planning clinic in northern Nigeria. The contraceptive implant she persuaded her patient to get will mean she won’t need to deliver the woman’s babies for the next four years. But for the many women she sees each day, it means fewer mouths to feed and a degree of freedom.

Continued at source: The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/09/trump-abortion-crackdown-risks-stoking-nigerias-population-boom