EPWORTH, Zimbabwe — Carrying her infant daughter, 19-year-old Sithulisiwe Moyo waited two hours to get birth-control pills from a tent pitched in a poor settlement on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
The outreach clinic in Epworth provides Moyo with her best shot at achieving her dream of returning to school. “I am too young to be a baby-making machine,” she said. “At least this clinic helps me avoid another pregnancy.”
But the free service funded by the U.S. government, the world’s largest health donor, might soon be unavailable.
As he did in his first term, U.S President-elect Donald Trump is likely in January to invoke the so-called global gag rule, a policy that bars U.S. foreign aid from being used to perform abortions or provide abortion information. The policy cuts off American government funding for services that women around the world rely on to avoid pregnancy or to space out their children, as well as for heath care unrelated to abortion.
The gag rule has a 40-year history of being applied by Republican presidents and rescinded by Democratic presidents. Every GOP president since the mid-1980s has invoked the rule, which is known as the Mexico City Policy for the city where it was first announced.
As one of his first acts as president in 2017, Trump expanded the rule to the extent that foreign NGOs were cut off from about $600 million in U.S. family planning funds and more than $11 billion in U.S. global health aid between 2017 and 2018 alone, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
The money — much of it intended for Africa — covered efforts such as preventing malaria and tuberculosis, providing water and sanitation, and distributing health information and contraception, which might also have repercussions for HIV prevention.
Women’s health advocates are “uneasy” following Trump’s victory, said Pester Siraha, director of Population Services Zimbabwe, an affiliate of MSI Reproductive Choices, an NGO that supports abortion rights in 36 countries.
The policy stipulates that foreign NGOs that receive U.S government funding must agree to stop abortion-related activities, including discussing it as a family planning option — even when they are using non-U.S. government funds for such activities. During Trump’s first term, MSI did not agree to those conditions, effectively making it ineligible for U.S government funding.
Siraha said that a blueprint offered to Trump by the…
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