The Trump Administration Is Conditioning Foreign Aid on Restricting Free Speech
The Global Gag Rule is back. And this time it's about much more than abortion.
With all of the absolute garbage that’s been coming out of the Trump administration, you may have missed what would have been in any other administration one of the biggest global health stories of the year: An expanded global gag rule that exports not just anti-abortion politics, but anti-trans and anti-gay bigotry, and the new right’s reactionary anti-”woke” and anti-DEI policies. This administration is waging a global war on abortion rights, on LGBT rights, and on the entire concept of equality — and they’re doing it by also exporting the American right’s extreme censoriousness and attacks on free speech.
The global gag rule, also known as the Mexico City Policy, is a long-standing restriction on US foreign family planning funding first put into place by Ronald Reagan, then rescinded by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican ones. Traditionally, the gag rule applied to foreign planning family planning organizations, and told them that they couldn’t receive US family planning funds if they (1) performed abortions with their own non-US money; (2) referred patients elsewhere for abortion services; or (3) advocated for abortion rights or otherwise “promoted” abortion. It was a bad rule. During Trump’s first term, I covered its impacts in Ghana and across sub-Saharan Africa.
But this year, the Trump administration decided to make it far broader. The new rule covers all foreign aid funding, not just that earmarked for family planning. It applies to all organizations receiving US foreign aid funding, not just international ones — it applies to American groups, too. And it expands its speech prohibitions from abortion and into “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and what conservatives call “gender ideology.”
This is devastating for women’s rights, LGBT rights, and human rights generally. It’s also a shocking encroachment on free speech — especially coming from a nation that, not so long ago, promoted the values of free speech, freedom, and democracy overseas. And it stands to have vast and deadly effects.
