The Terrifying Global Reach of the American Anti-Abortion Movement (trigger warning)
(a lengthy, horrifying, disturbing,angry-making, important read)
FUCK THE GODDAMNED CHRISTOFASCIST WOMAN-HATING GESTATIONAL SLAVERS
The Terrifying Global Reach of the American Anti-Abortion Movement (trigger warning)
4/7/2024 by Jodi Enda
American conservatives have been busy launching attacks on reproductive rights on other countries, too—with disastrous consequences for millions of poor women.
A teen mother breastfeeds her infant during a break from her classes at the Serene Haven Girl’s Secondary School, an informal school that boards underage mothers with their infants, some of whom are victims of sexual violence, in Kyeni, Kenya, on Sept. 24, 2021. The overwhelming stigma surrounding abortion means that many women resort to backstreet procedures that put their life in jeopardy or carry unwanted pregnancies to term. (Tony Karumba / AFP via Getty Images)
This article was originally published on The New Republic and was produced in collaboration with The Fuller Project.
Because Editar Ochieng knew the three young men, she didn’t think twice when they beckoned her into a house in an isolated area near the Nairobi River. One was like a brother; the other two were her neighbors in the sprawling Kenyan slum of Kibera. Ochieng did not know the woman who performed her abortion. She and a friend scoured Nairobi until they found her, an untrained practitioner who worked in the secrecy of her home and charged a fraction of what a medical professional would. Mostly, what Ochieng remembers is the agony when this stranger inserted something into her vagina and “pierced” her womb. “It was really very painful. Really, really, really painful,” she told me.
Afterward, Ochieng said, she cut up her mattress to use in place of sanitary pads, which she could not afford. She was 16 years old. As traumatic as her experience was, Ochieng was more fortunate than many women in Kenya, which bans most abortions. She, at least, survived.
Like Ochieng, most Kenyan women facing unwanted pregnancies have no good choices. They live in a culture that gives women little agency over their bodies; they experience high levels of poverty—two-thirds of residents live on less than $3.20 a day—and they must contend with conflicts between abortion laws codified in the country’s 2010 Constitution and an older, harsher penal code that remains on the books. Because the penal code criminalizes abortion, relatively few women are able to obtain the procedure legally, and then only if a health professional determines that their life or health is in danger or, technically, if their pregnancy was the result of rape. That final exception dates only to 2019—13 years after Ochieng’s three acquaintances raped her—and is rarely applied. Despite the prohibitions, more than half a million Kenyan women have abortions every year. The small percentage with means might find a trained professional willing to perform a clandestine, but safe, abortion.
. . . .
One big reason: American anti-abortion policies.
For half a century, the United States has used the power of the purse to force poorer nations to abide by the anti-abortion values of American conservatives or forgo aid for family planning and, more recently, other healthcare. Of the several policies adopted over the years, two have been particularly onerous, according to several studies and more than 20 interviews with researchers and reproductive rights advocates in the United States and abroad. Touted to reduce abortions, the policies actually have driven up their numbers sharply and led to tens of thousands of unnecessary maternal deaths. “Anything that happens in the U.S. has a huge impact on the rest of the world,” said Giselle Carino, director of Fòs Feminista, an international alliance that promotes sexual and reproductive health and justice. When Washington places restrictions on abortion, “we have a lot of evidence how it hurts, particularly the women who need the most care and services.”
That anti-abortion policies would lead to more abortions seems counterintuitive, except when you consider that the organizations that perform, counsel and educate people about abortion are often those that provide condoms, pills, IUDs, and other forms of birth control. If healthcare providers so much as mention abortion, they can lose money for broader healthcare services, including contraceptives. Fewer contraceptives equal more unwanted pregnancies. More unwanted pregnancies equal more abortions. More abortions in countries that greatly restrict them equal more unsafe abortions. And more unsafe abortions equal more maternal deaths. The United States is not to blame for all the internal political and cultural strife in other countries. But as the largest funder of healthcare in the world, what it does matters. Essentially, this nation has given women around the globe no alternative but to seek backstreet abortions that send some to emergency rooms and others to their graves.
Anything that happens in the U.S. has a huge impact on the rest of the world. … Abortions happen anyway, the rule just makes it unsafe, and particularly unsafe for those women who are already in the most difficult circumstances in life.
Giselle Carino, Fòs Feminista
. . . .
The Population Connection Action Fund projects a message onto the Trump International Hotel to protest the global gag rule, which bans healthcare providers that receive U.S. global health aid from referring, providing or discussing abortion with their patients, on Jan. 23, 2019. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
. . . .
“When the U.S. is making any decision, the reality is it affects directly a woman who is on the ground and a woman who is very, very poor,” Ochieng said. “We cannot wait for so many women to die to have change.”
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https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/07/anti-abortion-usa-foreign-policy-hiv-aids-menstruation-helms-global-gag-rule/
