President Trump and the GOP's recent threat to abortion is making waves across the world. No, not this recent threat or this recent threat, but this one. The one where Trump reinstated the "global gag rule" or Mexico City Policy, which stops federal aid to foreign organizations that provide or even give information about abortion. Making foreign organizations choose between funding or providing adequate healthcare puts them between a rock and a hard place, so the Dutch government is coming up with a solution.
The Independent reports that the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation for the Dutch government, Lilianne Ploumen, has announced plans to create an international fund that would provide money for services such as birth control, abortion, and education in developing countries. This is to counter the financial setback organizations would face were they to lose funding under the global gag rule.
According to Marie Stopes International, one of the groups that would lose funding, as many as fourteen women a day could die from this policy.
"This has far-reaching consequences," Ploumen says of the gag. "First of all, for all those women who have to make, if they want to have a child, a choice, but also for their husbands and children and society as a whole. Banning abortion does not lead to fewer abortions. It leads to more irresponsible practices in back rooms and more maternal deaths."
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