America’s culture wars are killing people overseas |
Nurse Matild Zainab Kamara displays some contraceptive products used during family planning counselling sessions at the Planned Parenthood Sexual Reproductive Health Clinic in Freetown, on November 12, 2025. | Saidu Bah/AFP via Getty Images
“The mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded,” Vice President JD Vance bellowed to a crowd of zoomer nuns, bagpipers, and white nationalists at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, last Friday.
The vice president then proceeded to announce a threefold expansion of the Mexico City policy, a decades-old, controversial foreign policy that prohibits organizations from receiving foreign aid if they mention abortion as a family planning option. It was reinstated last year when President Donald Trump resumed office.
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While it’s not uncommon for (usually Republican) administrations to reinstate it, this is only the second time the policy — which critics call the “global gag rule” — has been expanded. It now also prohibits talk of “gender ideology” or diversity, equity, and inclusion for all forms of assistance. The extended policy indicates that the administration will now........