Donald Trump Recovers The Mexico City Policy

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Two days after millions marched in Washington and around the world to defend women's rights, President Donald J. Trump has just signed his first anti-abortion decree by reviving the so-called Mexico City Policy.

One of the five decrees that Trump has signed so far since he came to power last Friday, this restored regulation prevents federal funds from being contributed to non-governmental organizations abroad that includes the option of terminating a pregnancy as a method of family planning.

The mandate has little to do with the Mexican capital and takes its name from the headquarters of the United Nations International Conference on Population held in 1984, which was held in Mexico City.

It was the late President Ronald Reagan who started the regulation, and over the years it has been instituted and removed on several occasions. Former President Bill Clinton was the first to repeal it in 1993, but George W. Bush reactivated it in 2001. Former President Barack Obama repealed it in the first days of his term.

The reactivation of this policy was signed by Trump on Monday in Washington before the alarm of organizations in favor of abortion and the applause of the so-called defenders of life.

Women in the Women's March March, January 21.

Here are the ways the new policy could affect women in the United States and the world:

1. - Forces health providers to accept the regulation and stop providing information services to their public or otherwise lose funds from the United States government. According to Time magazine, various health and development groups have expressed concern about the possible implications for women outside the United States. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is currently the largest donor of family planning services. Lack of information in the neediest communities would precipitate the increase in abortions due to unwanted pregnancies.

2.- The restoration of regulation in 2001 increased the number of abortions in sub-Saharan Africa due to the fact that many women who depended on clinics that received funds from the United States government stopped providing them with access to contraceptive methods, became pregnant and resorted to methods. abortifacients to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

3.- Organizations such as Marie Stops International - which has already said that it does not agree with the Trump decree - will lose financial aid from the government. The group says that this could cause some 6.5 million unwanted pregnancies, 2.2 million abortions, 2.1 million unsafe or illegal abortions and the death of 21,700 mothers.

"Attempts to stop abortion through restrictive laws - or to stop family planning - will never work because they do not eliminate the need for abortion," Marjorie Newman-Williams, vice president Marie Stopes International, told Time. "This policy exacerbates the inherently significant challenge of ensuring that people in developing countries who want to space out and plan for the children they have can get the contraceptives they need to do it."