Excerpt of Fair Observer op-ed by GJC Legal Adviser Elena Sarver.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut funding to the Organization for American States for protecting reproductive rights. While America’s attention has turned to the restrictive abortion bans across numerous states, the Trump administration has continued its relentless attacks on women’s bodies and the very foundations of women’s rights abroad. Under the guise of foreign policy, the White House is exporting censorship — ultimately threatening US allied relations, the human rights system and women’s health.

These actions should raise red flags around the world about the United States’ damaging influence on human rights systems abroad, and its potential to cause increasing harm in the future.

In March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced new changes to enforce and implement the Trump administration’s draconian policies on sexual and reproductive rights in foreign assistance. In the first part of Pompeo’s announcement, the administration expanded the scope of the Mexico City Policy (also known as the Global Gag Rule) to prohibit foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive US global health assistance funds from financing any other foreign NGOs that carry out banned operations, including performing or promoting abortion as a method of family planning.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— June 13, 2019

[NEW YORK, NY] - This week, the Trump Administration released the United States government’s latest strategy on women, peace and security (“WPS”).  While it contains lofty goals to advance women’s equality and political participation, these objectives are directly undermined by current US policies.

“The Trump Administration’s stated commitment to advancing women’s equality through the WPS strategy is absurd,” says Global Justice Center President Akila Radhakrishnan. “In fact, this administration is actively harming women and girls around the world by expanding the Global Gag Rule, blocking language on access to life-saving healthcare services for war rape victims at the UN Security Council, and impeding international efforts at accountability for gender-based violence through its threats against the International Criminal Court. Until these policies, and others, change, this WPS strategy is not even worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Excerpt of Ms. Magazine op-ed by GJC Communications Manager Liz Olson.  

Alabama’s sweeping abortion ban compares abortion to the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, as though the termination of a fetus is morally equivalent to the willful annihilation of a people. But it is abortion bans, not the women who seek them, that put lives at risk every day.

Legislation that criminalizes abortion access and provision does not prevent abortions—it just makes them more dangerous. The World Health Organization reports that about 25 million unsafe abortions are performed annually, primarily in regions with heavily restrictive abortion laws. Women who have unsafe abortions face serious and even fatal medical complications like heavy blood loss, infection and damage to internal organs. Unsafe abortions are even a leading cause of maternal mortality: 68,000 women die from them every year around the world.

The deadly impact of restrictive abortion policies is so well documented that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, once declared that total abortion bans “amount to a gender-based arbitrary killing, only suffered by women, as a result of discrimination enshrined in law.” 

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This May was a whirlwind of events for the Global Justice Center. 

We hosted the inaugural Global Justice Awards, and were honored to see so many friends and allies show their support for our mission. We were inspired by Patricia Sellers' powerful acceptance speech: "to all the young feminist lawyers: go to the places where they say you have no business. The time is urgent, and you must take it."

Taking those words to heart, we advocated for gender justice at events around the world—from the launch of the Gendered Peace project at the London School of Economics to the Gender and Genocide panel on the sidelines of the UN Security Council debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.

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