Trump Administration’s Inhumane Global Gag Rule Expansion and new Gender and Equity Foreign Aid Restrictions Will Cost Lives
Health GAP today warned that the Trump Administration’s new foreign aid rules grossly expanding the Global Gag Rule and imposing new funding restrictions regarding “Combating Gender Ideology” and “Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology” will threaten the lives, well-being, and human rights of communities around the world while undermining the effectiveness of U.S. global health assistance.
“These restrictions are an affront to human rights, particularly for transgender and gender diverse people who face worse health outcomes, such as higher rates of HIV infection, because of the very same bigotry and discrimination endorsed by these rules,” said Bellinda Thibela, Health GAP’s Coordinator for Health Justice and Human Rights. “They also contradict decades of evidence showing global health programs must be built to redress disparities in order to deliver real results.”
The new interim final rules expand unpopular existing restrictions regarding abortion in three ways: 1) vastly more funding is now included (all nonmilitary US foreign assistance); 2) affected entities now include U.S. NGOs; international and multilateral organizations; and foreign governments and parastatals and 3) sweeping new prohibitions will bar aid recipients from reaching vulnerable populations with programs targeted for their needs based on their national origin, race, color, or religion. Aid recipients will effectively be made to reject transgender and other gender diverse people, and reject programs that meet their needs, as a condition of receiving U.S. foreign assistance funding. Prohibitions vary among entities, with foreign NGOs subjected to the greatest restrictions, but overall they will weaken the effectiveness of U.S. funded global health programs by undermining access to essential health services, in furtherance of an extreme ideological agenda.
“Activists and Congress have fought to defend life-saving HIV and global health programs against Trump’s campaign of deadly and lawless cuts,” said Asia Russell, Health GAP Executive Director. “Now Trump wants to use foreign aid to deny the existence of entire communities of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people. This is unacceptable.”
Under the new rules, international and foreign entities will not only be barred from using U.S. foreign assistance funding for prohibited activities and speech, they will also be prohibited from using any funds from any source for such purposes, forcing those entities to choose between access to funding and upholding evidence and human rights. It also newly covers international organizations, which are now subject to the same rules as foreign and international NGOs.
U.S. NGOs, entitled to some degree of First Amendment protection, cannot use U.S. foreign assistance funds for prohibited abortion-related, gender-related, or equity-related purposes, but can use separate facilities and financially separated funds for such purposes, with the exception of gender-affirming care, based on an extremely onerous and costly process described in the rules.
The new rules would prohibit funding for health and social support services for transgender, non binary and intersex people and any program description, speech, service delivery, or program materials from referencing gender rather than male or female sex. In addition, programming, activities, service delivery, or educational materials addressing race, color, religion, or national origin disparities or inequalities and any efforts to redress inequality among disadvantaged groups would be prohibited.
“HIV programming requires inclusive and differentiated approaches, based on human rights and evidence, in order to reach populations most vulnerable and underserved,” said Professor Brook Baker, Health GAP Senior Policy Analyst. “Trump’s new policies are senseless and deadly. These restrictions insist that all people are purely individual and that race, color, religion, and national origin are not constitutive of identities nor one’s circumstances in life. According to Trump there are no legacies of discrimination, no identity-based advantages or disadvantages, and no right to redress demonstrable disparities in health and service delivery. This administration wants to use foreign aid as a weapon in ideological war. These new rules must be rejected—U.S. foreign aid recipients must be free to program according to need and to speak freely on all issues of health and inequality.”
