Trump Wants to Make African Countries Share Abortion Data to Get AIDS Funding

The Trump administration plans to condition global strength assistance on foreign countries sharing major amounts of medical evidence with the United States including on abortion according to a template for an aid agreement obtained by The Intercept The template agreement which references the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR but also applies funding to fight malaria tuberculosis and other pathogens would require countries that receive global healthcare assistance to share a broad range of physical condition care and pathogen evidence for the next years The model document would also require foreign governments to provide the United States with any facts access or information needed to monitor compliance with the Helms Amendment which prevents U S federal funds from being used to provide abortion care abroad This stipulation would give the United States broad authority to collect statistics on abortion care and approach for decades to come The agreement is just another example of the Trump Administration s playbook for using its power and influence to further its anti-choice agenda and undermine critical national general vitality responses wrote Melissa Cockroft global lead on abortion for the International Planned Parenthood Federation in a announcement to The Intercept Related Trump Would Rather Let Birth Control Expire Than Give It to Africans as Aid The document was developed in line with the State Department s new America First Global Wellbeing Strategy which seeks to broadly eliminate multilateral cooperation on international vitality care initiatives like the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system being negotiated by the World Healthcare Organization in favor of direct agreements between the United States and other countries After the administration shutdown brought negotiations to a screeching halt the department has renewed its efforts to reach bilateral global wellbeing agreements with dozens of countries primarily in Africa identified in its America First Global Healthcare Strategy The State Department is supposed to complete the deals by the end of the year Global wellbeing experts who spoke to The Intercept cautioned that these agreements appear to be highly unbalanced giving the Trump administration sweeping authority to extract records on a number of issues including on abortion raising considerable concerns about misuse at a time when the Trump administration is looking to limit access to abortion globally The State Department did not respond to a request for comment Collecting statistics itself isn t an strange function of a global soundness initiative noted Mitchell Warren the executive director of AVAC a nonprofit organization focused on HIV prevention PEPFAR in particular has invariably been very evidence rich lots of input collected and analyzed but in a very collaborative nature between governments civil society and the United States authorities and there s inevitably been great clarity on why we re collecting this input he revealed However Warren also noted that the section around any content access necessary to monitor compliance with the anti-abortion Helms Amendment which gives broad discretion to the United States to request access to abortion-related details for decades goes far beyond that scope The part about Helms and requiring compliance information on that for years along with everything else does raise various concerns about what the administration is doing with this stated Elisha Dunn-Georgiou president and CEO of Global Healthcare Council Is there a larger play at foot to use statistics to monitor countries regulatory moves around liberalizing restrictions on abortion While it s unclear exactly how the Trump administration plans to use this content Cockroft noted the model agreement is concerning against the larger backdrop of its anti-abortion agenda In January President Donald Trump reinstated the global gag rule a strategy that prevents foreign organizations that receive global fitness assistance from providing information referrals or services related to abortion care or advocating for abortion access We know the Trump administration is seeking at all costs to restrict abortion access globally revealed Cockroft Requests from the Trump administration in the MoU for any input for compliance monitoring are very concerning as it is unclear how exactly the records will be used and to what ends Plenty of countries are feeling so squeezed for funding that they will take the deal Dunn-Georgiou notified The Intercept that the administration is also in the process of expanding the rule potentially to encompass all non-military foreign assistance U S -based nonprofits and foreign governments massively expanding its scope and impact While there s no population information on how exactly these final agreements will differ from the template produced by the Trump administration the bulk recipient countries particularly in Africa don t have much negotiating power to change the terms to their benefit People are getting sick Medicine is hard to find I ve even heard of condom shortages in particular countries because the prevention funding for HIV has been stalled commented Dunn-Georgiou A large number of countries are feeling so squeezed for funding that they will take the deal The post Trump Wants to Make African Countries Share Abortion Figures to Get AIDS Funding appeared first on The Intercept