Nail your op-ed or letter to the editor (LTE) about the Global Gag Rule, the Helms Amendment, and international family planning funding with a few helpful tips.
Messaging Guidance
The Global Gag Rule and the Helms Amendment hamstring efforts to address the crisis of unsafe abortion throughout the developing world. The consequences are often deadly.
- The Helms Amendment prevents any U.S. foreign assistance from directly paying for abortion; the Global Gag Rule goes further, and prevents clinics that receive U.S. aid from counseling about, giving referrals for, or providing abortion services at any time, even if they use non-U.S. funding for these services. International organizations are also prohibited under the Global Gag Rule from advocating for more liberal abortion laws in their own countries.
- The Global Gag Rule forces international organizations to make an impossible choice — either decision (to forfeit U.S. global health aid or to kowtow to U.S. demands prohibiting any mention of abortion) results in cuts to crucial reproductive health and family planning services. This increases unplanned pregnancies, unwanted and mistimed births, unsafe abortions, and maternal deaths.
- An estimated 23,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions — nearly all in developing countries. It’s impossible to seriously address women’s health without considering the impact of unsafe abortion.
- When the Global Gag Rule is in effect, as it has been under every Republican president since 1984, vulnerable people lose access to reproductive health care and any other health services that affected clinics provide, including prevention and treatment for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases. Trump’s version of the policy affects all global health assistance.
The Global Gag Rule and the Helms Amendment increase unsafe abortion.
- The Global Gag Rule causes clinics to close, contraceptive supplies to dry up, mobile health delivery to end, and costs to patients to rise.
- The Global Gag Rule, under George W. Bush, caused abortion rates in the most-affected African countries to increase by 40%, according to a study published in The Lancet by independent Stanford University researchers. Most of those abortions were unsafe. We can expect the results of Trump’s Global Gag Rule to be at least as detrimental.
- The Helms Amendment has a chilling effect — as its supporters intend — on abortion care and women’s rights in developing countries. It creates confusion and divisive rhetoric around reproductive rights, and stunts countries’ social progress.
Investment in international reproductive health and family planning saves lives.
- We know that when people can make their own health care decisions, their families and their communities thrive. The power to decide whether or when to get pregnant is critical to everyone’s health, autonomy, dignity, educational opportunity, and economic security. Ensuring that every person has this power will strengthen families, communities, and countries across the globe.
- In 2024, Congress appropriated $607.5 million in U.S. assistance for family planning and reproductive health programs overseas (an amount that has remained stagnant for 14 years), including $32.5 million for UNFPA. According to the Guttmacher Institute, U.S. family planning assistance in 2023 averted 8.1 million unintended pregnancies, 3.2 million unintended births, 2.6 million unsafe abortions, and 14,000 maternal deaths.
- Women with access to contraception have higher incomes, own more farmland and other assets, and have healthier families. This leads to greater economic freedom and stability for women and their families in developing countries, which has been found to contribute to economic growth and greater prosperity.
- The United States must increase its investment in international family planning to $1.74 billion, including $116 million for UNFPA—this is our “fair share” contribution for eliminating unmet need for family planning in the developing world.
Now that you've got the messaging down, let's talk about logistics
Each newspaper has its own submission guidelines, so make sure you look up the ones for the paper you’re contacting. Go to the opinion page of the paper in question and take note of its requirements, including maximum word count. Letters to the editor are usually between 150 and 225 words, while op-eds are typically longer, around 500-750 words. But again, look at the info for the specific paper you’re trying for!
Opinion articles (op-eds) can be on any topic, but they’re more attractive if they address a current event or a “hook,” such as a newly introduced bill or budget, an upcoming election, or a recent court decision. Letters to the editor (LTEs) are responses to previously published articles, and they are typically only accepted for up to a week after the original article’s publication—time is of the essence if you’re submitting an LTE, so get on it as soon as you see an article that needs a response!
Improve your chances of being published by including citations
Papers love it when authors include citations for data, statistics, and non-opinion statements. Hyperlinking citations in the body of your letter or article makes it easy for editors to fact check your piece and more likely that they’ll want to publish it. If you’re having trouble finding a particular citation, contact Marian Starkey, VP for Communications, for help.
Email Marian