Global Gag Experience: Access Denied
On May 15th of last year, President Donald Trump broadcasted a vast extension of the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule. The policy curbs women’s access to comprehensive health care around the world and has been found to drive up rates of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion. To me, the Global Gag Rule is a cruel and extraordinary attack on the world’s most vulnerable women.
When I joined Global Health Corps as a fellow last year, I was excited to apply my monitoring and evaluation skills to advance the important work of my placement organization, Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ). When I started my position, the organization had just refused to accept the terms of U.S funding under the recently passed Global Gag Rule, and there was lots of uncertainty. On one of my first days of work, my supervisor told me: “ You are just beginning your fellowship and I know I am supposed to lift your spirits and tell you that all will be well…but with the Global Gag Rule we don’t know what will happen to the organisation. The only advice I have been given and I will give to you is to brace for impact.”
PPAZ has an over 40-year track record in family planning and it is the leading nongovernmental service provider in Zambia. It is also a leading actor in the fight against HIV/AIDS and programs serving Zambian youth. Zambia has relatively liberal abortion laws, but, in practice, access to abortion is heavily restricted. Because there are only three hospitals in the entire country that are staffed and equipped to perform the procedure, many women still undergo unsafe abortions. PPAZ provides abortion counseling and referrals, but it does not perform abortions. As the only NGO operating reproductive health clinics in Zambia, PPAZ has provided valuable and subsidized family planning and reproductive health services to communities across the country.
I am concerned about the impact of losing U.S. funding on PPAZ, since that is where I am based, but I recognize that this challenge extends beyond Zambia. Many women and girls worldwide still do not have access to the essential human rights that ensure their sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Humanitarian disasters, including natural disasters like droughts, floods, and conflicts across the globe, especially in Africa, have heightened in the past decade and compounded lack of access. Frail health systems in fragile states are unable to respond to the SRH needs of women and youth and the prevention and management of gender-based violence (GBV). While solutions are well known, the scope of current programmes is inadequate to decrease the scale of the problem. There is a pressing need for collaboration to advance sustainable, low technology, cost-effective methods that can promote the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls, especially on the African continent.
“There is a pressing need for collaboration to advance sustainable, low technology, cost-effective methods that can promote the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls, especially on the African continent.”
I will always speak up about injustices that I see in society, and I will always use my words. I feel that the world is not safe if people do not seek to make sure that all women have equal rights, and part of that means fighting back and getting creative in the face of oppressive policies like the Global Gag Rule. I am a global citizen and a Global Health Corps fellow, so my focus is on building a stronger community around me towards a more equitable world.
Jessica Mayenda is a 2017–2018 Global Health Corps fellow at Planned Parenthood of Zambia.
