President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order reinstating a policy critics call the Global Gag Rule, further cementing reproductive rights advocates’ warning that 2017 would entail an uphill battle for women’s healthcare.
Officially known as the Mexico City Policy, the rule, as Nonprofit Quarterly explained, “specifically prohibits international charities from promoting abortion as a method of family planning even if that ‘promotion’ simply entails a physician engaging in a conversation about the option of abortion with a patient.” As such, Kiersten Gillette-Pierce and Jamila Taylor write at Center for American Progress, it “infringes upon women’s fundamental right to make informed decisions about their bodies and their health.”
Since it was first signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, it has been an on-again, off-again U.S. policy, with Republican presidents keeping it in place, while Democrats have rescinded it, most recently President Barack Obama, who began his presidency in 2009 with an executive order striking down the rule.