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-- 2017 --
April 3: Donald Trump Defunds Global Maternal Health Organization
Days after Melania Trump presented courage awards to 13 women working for gender equity around the globe, President Donald Trump’s administration halted all U.S. grants to the United Nations Population Fund, an international humanitarian aid organization that provides reproductive health care and works to end child marriage and female genital cutting in more than 150 countries. The State Department invoked the 1985 Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which he said will ensure that “U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or programs that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” President George W. Bush used the same policy to defund the UNFPA from 2002 to 2008, arguing that the organization’s presence in China constituted participation in the country’s “one child” coercive family planning policy. The UNFPA does not provide or promote abortions. The organization works in China to make reproductive health program voluntary and rights-based and has advocated against the country’s one-child policy. The Trump administration did not explain exactly how it determined that the UNFPA violated any U.S. law.
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“The UNFPA no longer provides any financial support to the Chinese government to support its family planning program. Not a dollar,” said Peter Yeo, vice president of public policy at the United Nations Foundation. “So I’m not quite frankly sure how you make this Kemp-Kasten determination with a straight face.” Trump’s move will pull $76 million from the UNFPA ― about 7 percent of its budget. In 2016, the funding provided access to contraceptives to 800,000 people around the world and prevented an estimated 100,000 unsafe abortions and 10,000 maternal deaths, according to the organization. At the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, for instance, UNFPA-supported health providers have managed to deliver more than 7,000 babies without a single maternal death.
http://www.npwj.org/content/Donald-Trump-Defunds-Global-Maternal-Health-Organization.html
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May: Why Texas Is the Most Dangerous U.S. State to Have a Baby
Maternal mortality rates have been increasing throughout the nation. But if Texas was a country, it would have the highest in the developed world.
https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-maternal-infant-mortality-pregnant-women-texas.html
May 12: How President Trump’s Policy Agenda Hurts Mothers
President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been an all-out war on women. Despite statements he has made about supporting women and “invest[ing] in women’s health,” he has ushered forth an agenda that will go down in history as one of the most egregious efforts in decades to deny women’s fundamental rights. As we approach the first Mother’s Day with Trump as president, let’s take a deeper look at how his anti-woman policies could have a particularly harmful effect on mothers.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2017/05/12/432285/president-trumps-policy-agenda-hurts-mothers/
-- 2018 --
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March 20: Trump Administration ‘Reversed Course’ On Global Maternal Health Progress
“…Many [maternal health] success stories were made possible through international development aid for maternal health, which increased steadily from 2010 to 2015. The United States has a proud, bipartisan history of leading such efforts. … Under President Donald Trump, however, the U.S. has reversed course. For starters, it has withdrawn funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)… Moreover, the Trump administration has expanded the ‘Mexico City Policy,’ also known as the ‘global gag rule,’… The Trump administration’s draconian approach is particularly dangerous for newborns and mothers. In many parts of the world, the grassroots organizations providing family planning services, maternal and child health care, HIV/AIDS prevention, and malaria treatment often represent the first and only line of defense for pregnant women at risk of complications. … [E]veryone should consider how much more attention and funding maternal and women’s health would get if women were more equally represented in government…” (3/19).
https://www.kff.org/news-summary/trump-administration-reversed-course-on-global-maternal-health-progress/
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May 22: Trump’s Global Gag Rule Increases Maternal Mortality
https://www.populationconnectionaction.org/2018/05/22/trumps-global-gag-rule-increases-maternal-mortality/
July 12: Despite Trump's Breastfeeding Opposition, All 50 U.S. States Back It
The Trump administration this spring tried to remove pro-breastfeeding language from a World Health Organization resolution. But here at home, breastfeeding has steadily become more accepted and accessible — culminating this year in the 49th and 50th states enacting laws to allow it in public.
https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/sl-breastfeeding-who-trump-states.html
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August 8: The Costs of Trump’s Global Gag Rule
Trump’s “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” policy does nothing to protect life. Instead, it damages international progress toward expanding health-care services, especially for women and girls in developing countries.
"When are you coming back? Why have you left? Why aren’t you coming to our community?” These are the questions that women and girls in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and other developing countries ask in desperate phone calls to their health-care providers after a local health clinic shuts down. The women are at a loss to understand why these clinics, often the only facility accessible to them in small towns and remote rural villages, have suddenly stopped providing much-needed services.
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The reason for these life-endangering cutbacks? President Trump’s resurrection of the global gag rule. The expanded rule has been in effect for a little over a year, and several international health organizations have detailed how the anti-abortion policy, originally dreamed up by the Reagan administration in 1984, has led to major losses in health services, especially for hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations across the globe.
The Reagan-era version prohibited international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive certain kinds of U.S. foreign assistance funds from providing, counseling, or making referrals for abortion services. But Trump’s “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” (PLGHA) memorandum went further, targeting all global health assistance funds that an organization controls. An international NGO is prohibited from even using its own funds to “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” if it wants to continue to receive U.S. aid.
https://prospect.org/article/costs-trump%E2%80%99s-global-gag-rule
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September 20: The Trump Administration Intends To Cut Cancer Research Funding To Pay For The Care Of Immigrant Children
The number of immigrant children in government custody has skyrocketed from 2,400 in May 2017 to 12,800 as of September this year.
Seeking additional funds to house and feed immigrant children separated from their parents, the federal government intends to move money from maternal health, mental health, AIDS, and substance abuse programs, as well as cancer research.
In a letter sent on Sept. 5 to Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar said he plans to shift $266 million to the Unaccompanied Alien Children program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhisubbaraman/cancer-research-cuts-migrant-children
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September 25: Cardin, Senators Introduce Bill to Enhance Maternal Health Coverage Under Medicaid, Improve Health Outcomes for New Moms
Bill seeks to reverse rising maternal mortality rates, close disparities that put women of color at risk
https://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/cardin-senators-introduce-bill-to-enhance-maternal-health-coverage-under-medicaid-improve-health-outcomes-for-new-moms
December 19: Landmark legislation headed to the president's desk would provide millions of dollars to help states determine why women are dying from pregnancy and childbirth at troubling rates. But the bill passed last week by both houses of Congress does not specifically require states to examine whether flawed medical care played a role.
Studies have found that at least half of childbirth-related deaths could have been prevented if health care providers had followed best medical practices to ensure complications were diagnosed and treated quickly and effectively.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/deadly-deliveries/2018/12/19/maternal-mortality-rate-bill-targets-chidbirth-deaths/2339750002/
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December 21: H.R.1318 - Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2018115th Congress (2017-2018)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1318
December 27: President Trump has signed a bill aimed at reducing the United States' maternal mortality rate — the highest rate of all developed nations — after it passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/907008
-- 2019 --
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February 28: Trump’s Throttling of Title X Ends Healthcare Support for Those Who Need it Most
The American Medical Association, along with Planned Parenthood has just sued the Trump Administration for its ‘gag rule,’ on funding for abortion providers. Here's why the AMA says the rule, if implemented, “will be a national public health crisis in short order.”
Four million people in 2017 benefited from Title X-funded services, ranging from cervical and breast cancer screening to contraception and STD testing. Two-thirds of these people, most of them women, were living at or below the poverty line. Last week, when Trump finalized a new rule on February 26 preventing clinics who receive Title X funds from performing abortions or referring patient to clinics that do, he in essence issued an ultimatum to family planning clinics: Abandon four million people who rely on you for non-abortion services or abandon reproductive rights.
https://progressive.org/dispatches/trumps-throttling-of-title-x-hurts-those-in-need-pettway-190228/
-- 2020 --
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