SAXTONS RIVER — In the late 1970s, as I was beginning my career in women's health, one of the first feminist icons I met was a flamboyant, passionate, and deeply committed woman named Perdita Huston. She had made her mark internationally working as a journalist and a Peace Corps professional, but what put her on the feminist map was her 1979 book Third World Women Speak Out.
Huston's book was remarkable because she was one of the first people to give women in the developing world a chance to tell their own stories. She gave them voice, and with that voice they proclaimed most loudly that they wanted fewer children and that they wanted those children to be educated.
It was a radical moment with far-reaching ramifications because it coincided with the early days of family planning becoming a goal of international funding agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
With the help of the women in the development movement, spawned in part by the women's movement at large, donor organizations had begun to realize that family planning was key to a country's economic and social development and that women's reproductive health was an issue that mattered.
Subsequent years revealed that family planning was, indeed, a wise investment.
Countries like Egypt and Bangladesh showed that once women controlled their fertility, their families, communities, and countries benefited, whether by increasing educational opportunities for girls, widening agricultural opportunities for women, or bringing women into decision-making at some levels of society.
None of this happened quickly or easily; there are always naysayers and development “specialists” willing to argue against innovation (and empowering women), no matter how simple and effective an intervention may be.
But gradually the world saw how important family planning was to the healthy development of nations - let alone women and their families.
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Now, fast forward to Trumpian times, in which the president has reinstated Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy of 1984 - revoked by Bill Clinton, restored by George W. Bush, and revoked by Barack Obama - in which nongovernmental organizations are forbidden to receive U.S. federal funding if they perform or promote abortion in other countries.
Trump goes even further. His administration, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor, wants to make it easier for employers to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees if the employer has “a religious or moral objection” to doing so.
The administration also wants to make it harder for women denied birth control coverage to get no-cost contraception directly from insurance companies, as they have been doing.
In an attempt to rush this policy through, the administration made the absurd claim that taking time to seek public comment would be “contrary to the public interest” and went so far as to say that coverage of contraception could lead to “risky sexual behavior,” a nod to those who believe women's sexuality is evil.
Not only is that one huge misogynistic insult to women. What is riskier than setting women up for unwanted pregnancies while trying to eliminate safe abortion and shut down Planned Parenthood?
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These actions are a setback of huge proportion. They affect not just women in the United States but also women around the world.
In Madagascar, for example, the change in policy is forcing dramatic cutbacks by the largest provider of long-term contraception in the country, Marie Stopes International (MSI), which receives millions of dollars from USAID for its work there.
Ironically, abortion is illegal in that country, but MSI cannot receive U.S. aid because it will not renounce abortion as part of reproductive health services in other parts of the world.
Hundreds of women and girls flock to remote MSI clinics, where they receive everything from malaria prevention to HIV treatment to contraceptives. It's a scene repeated all over the developing world no matter who is providing services.
What is to become of all those women?
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The policy, already making its way to the courts, is clearly aimed at mollifying organizations like March for Life and Real Alternatives, anti-abortion groups that don't qualify for religious exemptions but claim to hold strong moral convictions unrelated to a particular religion.
In his long string of lies, Donald Trump and his administration have claimed, absent of any evidence, that its new rules won't have an effect on “over 99.9 percent of the 165 million women in the United States,” while simultaneously arguing that low-income women will still be able to get subsidized or free contraception through community and government health programs.
All this while the administration plans to substantially cut government spending on such programs.
The president's attack on birth control, safe and accessible abortion, and the Affordable Care Act is low on intelligence and high on lies. It is spiteful, vindictive, woman-hating, and downright mean. It will hurt millions of women and their families.
There are only two ways to describe it: utterly inhumane and grossly misogynistic. Everyone should be resisting mightily.