Contact:
Sara Viglione
Center for Global Development
[email protected]
In response to the reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy by the Trump administration, Janeen Madan Keller, Policy Fellow and Deputy Director of Global Health Policy at the Center for Global Development, comments:
“An expanded Mexico City Policy will have wide-reaching impacts on women and girls’ access to life-saving healthcare. When women and girls make informed decisions about whether and when to have children, it has a direct impact on boosting education outcomes, labor force participation, and wages.
“As research shows, the Mexico City Policy reduces access to contraception which—counter to the policy’s intended goal—leads to more unplanned pregnancies and higher abortion rates. In addition, the expanded policy, which was introduced during Trump’s first term and applied to all US global health assistance, also led to disruptions and gaps in other critical health services, including HIV/AIDS programming and cervical cancer screenings.
“Finally, withholding US funding for UNFPA could have very different consequences today compared to 2017 when the first Trump administration cut UNFPA funding. At that time, other donors bolstered UNFPA’s budget, preventing negative impacts on programming. However, with many donors now slashing aid budgets, it’s unclear whether they would cover the shortfall.”