Safeguarding global SRHR: European strategies amid US policy shifts

Advocacy briefing towards European governments

On November 5, 2024, Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States for a second term, beginning on January 20, 2025. Alongside this, the Republican Party secured majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, consolidating its legislative power.

This political shift poses significant threats to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) both domestically and globally. Trump’s policies have signaled in the past a systematic attack on human rights and multilateral systems, bodily autonomy, equality, and the right to health. The potential implementation in his second mandate of Project 2025 risks drastically jeopardizing decades of progress around SRHR, gender equality and racial and social justice.

Over the past 40 years, since when former President Reagan introduced both the Mexico City Policy (also known as the Global Gag Rule) and the Kemp-Kasten Amendment at the 2nd International Conference on Population in 1984, all Republican administrations used these two tools with the aim of undermining support for sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide.

During his second mandate, Trump will therefore very likely, at the very minimum, seek renewed implementation of the expanded Global Gag Rule and the Kemp-Kasten Amendment.

In light of all this, Countdown 2030 Europe strongly calls on European governments to scale up financial and political support to safeguard and promote SRHR, advance gender equality and uphold human rights.

Read our asks in the brief below.

Photo by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash

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