New US funding rules tie aid to abortion, gender ideology, DEI bans

The U.S. State Department has introduced three sweeping new rules that would significantly restrict how organizations implement U.S. foreign assistance, extending long-standing abortion-related limits to include gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion. For decades, Republican administrations have enforced the Mexico City Policy, or global gag rule, which blocks U.S. federal funding to international nongovernmental organizations that provide or inform about abortion, even when those activities are funded by other donors. But the new rules dramatically expand such restrictions. U.S. Vice President JD Vance said in a speech on Friday that the changes make the policy three times larger. The restrictions go far beyond abortion. They apply across all foreign assistance funding — not just global health — and, for the first time, extend to a new universe of recipients, including international organizations. Together, the trio of rules — “combating gender ideology in foreign assistance,” “combating discriminatory equity ideology in foreign assistance rules,” and “protecting life in foreign assistance” — form what the administration calls the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance Policy. Each rule runs roughly 55 pages and spells out how the new requirements will be included in the terms and conditions of future grants and cooperative agreements, as well as new funding under existing instruments. They do not apply to contracts, which would require separate rulemaking, and they apply only to State Department funding — meaning other agencies would need to develop their own parallel rules. Each rule is far-reaching and, in some cases, vague — a combination that makes compliance difficult and interpretation uncertain. Some say that ambiguity may be intentional. Several gender and reproductive rights advocates described the policy as “weaponizing foreign aid,” calling the rules ”insidious” and “ideological weapons.” “Bullying countries into complying with anti-rights and extremist ideology is despicable and unacceptable. The imperialist goals of this administration are on full display in these conditions to foreign assistance,” said Anu Kumar, president and CEO of Ipas, a reproductive justice organization. What the rules say While the three rules are structurally similar and often use similar language, each has distinct legal justifications, focus, and implications. The rule aimed at combating gender ideology requires recipients of non-military foreign aid to agree that they will not use any funds to “promote gender ideology” or provide “sex-rejecting procedures.” In some cases, organizations would also face limits on lobbying for legal protections, teaching certain sex education materials, and performing or counseling about gender-affirming medical interventions. The administration defines the prohibited ideology as one that “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.” Several advocates said this rule was the “most malicious” and would be tremendously harmful in part because it explicitly denies the existence of transgender people. This new DEI rule prohibits the use of non-military foreign aid to support or promote "discriminatory equity ideology" and "unlawful DEI-related discrimination.” It defines discriminatory equity ideology as one that “treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals and minimizes agency, merit and capability in favor of generalizations.” Aid implementers must agree to restrict activities such as teaching materials that advance these concepts or using race, religion, or national origin as criteria for program participation and employment. Experts said this rule is the most vague and could be especially difficult to operationalize. It may also conflict with congressional priorities and local laws. Programs such as women, peace, and security initiatives or women’s economic empowerment efforts — which explicitly target women — could arguably run afoul of the rule. There are also unresolved questions about how the policy might affect internal hiring policies, particularly in countries where laws mandate participation of women or Indigenous groups. The “protecting life in foreign assistance” policy, also known as the Mexico City Policy, largely mirrors past iterations in prohibiting aid recipients from providing or promoting abortion using U.S. funds. But it applies more broadly and introduces new requirements for U.S. NGOs, which must now certify that they will not provide abortions as a method of family planning overseas with U.S. dollars and must ensure physical and financial separation between U.S.-funded programs and abortion-related activities. Several experts said those separation rules are impractical, if not impossible, to implement. The rules take effect in 30 days and apply restrictions to three categories of aid implementers: foreign NGOs and international organizations, U.S. NGOs, and foreign governments and parastatals. Because the policies apply across all foreign assistance, organizations working in humanitarian response, education, and agriculture will now be subject to the restrictions. In the past, the restrictions did not apply to U.S. NGOs, international organizations, or foreign governments, raising further questions about compliance, especially where the rules may conflict with domestic laws or organizational charters. While the restrictions include a waiver process run by the State Department, they provide no details on how the waivers would be granted or what criteria would apply, beyond reference to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. Response Reproductive rights advocates say the new policies are unprecedented in their breadth and process, describing them as “harmful and destructive.” “They're making a lot of assertions about process and legal authority that are pretty unusual,” Beirne Roose-Snyder, a senior policy fellow at the Council for Global Equality, told Devex. She said the idea that accepting U.S. funding for a specific activity — such as building a school or delivering clean water — gives the U.S. government leverage over everything an organization does with all its funding is “incredible.” “It’s really putting our finger on the scales to silence half of civil society or more on rights, on abortion rights, on health, on the well-being and safety and the existence of trans, nonbinary and intersex people. We are saying we’re going to silence everyone who doesn’t agree with us,” Roose-Snyder said. Applying the rules to international organizations — including United Nations agencies — is unprecedented. Previous administrations “understood that this was simply unworkable” because it conflicts with multilateral systems in which resources are pooled, and no single country’s domestic agenda dictates operations, she said. Several advocates said the move reflects a broader U.S. rejection of multilateralism, forcing organizations to either adopt the Trump administration’s worldview and speech restrictions or walk away. The rules being applied to governments, including through the global health memorandums of understanding now being signed by African countries, are particularly concerning, said Musoba Kitui, country director of the Ipas Africa Alliance in Kenya. “It's just important to really emphasize that sexual and reproductive health is not a diplomatic bargaining chip. It's a fundamental human right, and essential health care services must be separate from political agendas,” he said. It is also unusual for the rulemaking process to be used to advance foreign policy in general, Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, told Devex. Past iterations of the Mexico City Policy were implemented through executive orders. While rulemaking typically allows for public comment, agencies can waive that requirement if they argue the rules must take effect immediately. Impacts It is probably too early to predict how organizations will respond, but many experts said that the immediate effect will be uncertainty and disruption. “A big part of its power is the chaos and confusion that it sows,” Sarah Shaw, associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, told Devex. “It creates this culture of fear, and no one individual wants to be the one that was responsible for losing [their organization’s] U.S. funding, so the safe position is to overimplement.” Even before the rules formally take effect, organizations may scale back or alter their programming to avoid risk. Others may walk away from U.S. money to avoid compliance. Many will face conflicts between complying with these rules and meeting the expectations of other donors. “The most pressing and hardest questions will be the humanitarian issues that are going to come. There will be groups that just cannot figure out a way to comply with three such incredibly broad, chaotically defined restrictions that almost certainly conflict with other grants and cooperative agreements they already have,” Friedrich-Karnik said. The compliance burden will be significant, experts said — and the result may be a loss of the most effective and experienced partners in U.S. foreign assistance.