Gender, North–South relations: reviewing the Global Gag Rule and the defunding of UNFPA under President Trump

Abstract

In 2017, American President Donald Trump reinstated the ‘global gag rule’(GGR). This order bans new funding to nongovernmental organisations that provide abortion as a method of family planning, lobby to make abortion laws less restrictive, or provide information, referrals or counselling on abortions. In the same year the Trump administration defunded The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The latter is reviewed against the backdrop of the conflict in Syria. These policies draw upon, and reproduce, normative representations of women as vulnerable, weak, passive and maternal. Focusing on women’s access to abortion following wartime rape, the meanings and implications of these policies are reviewed. Transnational and postcolonial feminist perspectives are used to unpack the core themes of this piece: gender, reproductive health care and foreign economic policy. Three main arguments are made: (1) US foreign policy on abortion under the Trump administration draws implicitly on conservative ideas about gender, sexuality and maternity; (2) denying female survivors of rape access to abortion – which is discriminatory and violates key international instruments – is a form of structural violence that amounts to torture; and (3) the GGR and the defunding of UNFPA reproduce structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South.