A U.S. foreign policy that cuts money to nongovernmental organizations performing or promoting abortions abroad has actually led to an increase in abortions, according to Stanford researchers who have conducted the most comprehensive academic study of the policy’s impact.

Eran Bendavid and Grant Miller — both associate professors at Stanford University School of Medicine and core faculty members at Stanford Health Policy — and doctoral candidate Nina Brooks find that abortions increased among women living in African countries where NGOs, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, were most vulnerable to the policy’s requirements.

The policy, widely known as the Mexico City Policy, explicitly prohibits U.S. foreign aid from flowing to any NGO that will not abide by the policy’s main condition: no performing or discussing abortion as a method of family planning, even if just in the form of education or counseling.

The policy has been a political hot potato since its inception. Enacted under Ronald Reagan in 1984, it’s been enforced by subsequent Republican administrations while Democrats in the White House revoked the policy within days of taking office.

The study by Brooks, Bendavid and Miller, published June 27 in The Lancet Global Health, looked at the policy’s effects in more than two dozen African countries over a span of 20 years under three presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It finds that, when the policy was in place during the Bush years, abortions were 40 percent higher relative to the Clinton and Obama administrations.

When the policy was suspended during Obama’s two terms, the research shows that the upward trend in abortion rates reversed.

“Our research suggests that a policy that is supported by taxpayers ostensibly wishing to drive down abortion rates worldwide does the opposite,” said Bendavid, a faculty affiliate of the Stanford King Center on Global Development, which is part of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

A key reason for the uptick in abortions is that many NGOs affected by the policy also provide contraceptives – and funding cuts mean birth control is harder to get, said Brooks.

“By undercutting the ability to supply modern contraceptives, the unintended consequence is that abortion rates increase,” she said.

And the policy’s scope has expanded under the Trump administration. While it originally restricted aid directed only toward providing family planning and reproductive health services, President Trump has extended the policy to cover any group engaged in global health, including organizations providing services for HIV or child health – not just family planning.

Groundbreaking Research

The stakes are high. America is the world’s largest provider of development assistance and spent about $7 billion on international health aid in 2017. Many women in sub-Saharan Africa depend on this aid for contraceptives.

In sub-Saharan Africa, NGOs are often primary providers of family planning services. Two of the world’s largest family planning organizations – International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International – have forfeited large sums of U.S. cash for refusing to comply with the policy, according to news reports.

The research findings were based on records of nearly 750,000 women in 26 sub-Saharan African countries from 1995 to 2014. When the policy was in effect under George W. Bush, contraceptive use fell by 14 percent, pregnancies rose by 12 percent and abortions rose by 40 percent relative to the Clinton and subsequent Obama years – an impact sharply timed with the policy and in proportion to the importance of foreign assistance across sub-Saharan Africa.

The paper is the second study of the rule’s impact by Bendavid and Miller, who are both faculty members of Stanford Health Policy. The research is also one of the very few evidence-based analyses of the policy.

Their earlier research, the first quantitative, large-scale effort to examine the policy’s impacts, looked at a smaller set of African countries during the Clinton and Bush administrations and also found an increase in abortion rates when the policy was enacted in 2001.

“Our latest study strengthened our earlier findings because we were able to look at what happens when the rule was turned off, then on, and then off again,” said Bendavid, referring to the policy’s whipsawing under Clinton, Bush and then Obama.

Miller, who is the director of the King Center and a SIEPR senior fellow, says the team’s research reveals a deeply flawed policy.

“We set out to provide the best and most rigorous evidence on the consequences of this policy,” he said. “What we found is a clear-cut case of government action that everyone on all sides of the abortion debate should agree is not desirable.”

Signs of a Global Pushback

Brooks also notes that their findings may underestimate the rule’s full impact.

“The excess abortions performed due to the policy are more likely to be performed unsafely, potentially harming women beyond pregnancy terminations,” she said.

Under Trump, the international response to U.S. funding cuts has shifted. Norway, Canada and several other countries have pledged to increase funding of international NGOs affected by the policy – though not by enough to cover the expected shortfall, says Miller.

“This shows us,” he said, “that despite the intense partisanship in the U.S. over the rule and its implementation, there are ways that policymakers around the world can offset its effects – by ensuring higher levels of family planning funding, for example.”

"Does democracy require parties, and if so, what are the consequences of weaker parties on democratic governance?" - writes Didi Kuo. Read here.

Thirty years ago this week, I watched the news from Beijing and started shredding my bedding. It was the night before my college graduation, I had been studying Chinese politics, and news had broken that college students just like us had been gunned down in Tiananmen Square after weeks of peaceful and exhilarating democracy protests—carried on international TV. In the iconic square where Mao Zedong had proclaimed the People’s Republic decades before, bespectacled students from China’s best universities had camped out, putting up posters with slogans of freedom in Chinese and English. A “goddess of democracy” figure modeled after the Statue of Liberty embodied their hopes—and ours—for political liberation in China.

On my campus back then were just a handful of students majoring in East Asian studies. Learning of the brutal crackdown in Beijing, we somehow found one another, gathered our friends, and stayed up making hundreds of white armbands for classmates to wear at commencement the next day. Grappling with the cold realities of the “real world” we were about to enter, we didn’t know what else to do. So we tore sheets and cried for what might have been.

The June 4, 1989, massacre was a horrifying spectacle that the Chinese government has sought to erase from national memory ever since. But, 30 years later, contemplating what might have been is more important than ever. In hindsight, Tiananmen Square serves as a continuing reminder about just how much China has defied, and continues to defy, the odds and predictions of experts. The fact is that generations of American policy makers, political scientists, and economists have gotten China wrong more often than they’ve gotten China right. In domestic politics, economic development, and foreign policy, China has charted a surprising path that flies in the face of professional prognostications, general theories about anything, and the experience of other nations.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

Venezuela is in the midst of an economic, social and political crisis, said Harold Trinkunas, the deputy director of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and an expert on Latin American politics.

“Venezuela is a major oil-producing company, and it experienced a boom between 2000 and 2012,” Trinkunas told FSI Director Michael McFaul on the World Class podcast. “Up until then, Venezuela seemed to be doing pretty well.”

But things have changed since former President Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013. Once one of Latin America’s wealthiest nations, Venezuela’s economy has collapsed by more than 50 percent in recent years, Trinkunas said. Meanwhile, a large majority of its population is living in poverty, millions have fled the country, and the government — led by President Nicolás Maduro — has become increasingly authoritarian and unpopular among citizens.

Forces Behind the Downturn

During his first five years in office, Maduro’s government politicized the military and the oil industry, Trinkunas said, noting that oil production in Venezuela has declined from 3 million barrels per day 20 years ago to fewer than 1 million barrels per day in recent years. After Maduro was re-elected in 2018 amongst reports of coercion, fraud and electoral rigging, about 50 countries — including the United States and many members of the European Union — denounced his election.

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“The fact that there are 50 countries [that oppose Maduro] is really quite unusual,” Trinkunas said. “And this is the United States and many of its allies — many western democracies are in this camp.”

The Failed Uprising

Less than a year after the election, opposition leader Juan Guaidó invoked the country’s constitution to declare himself interim president. About three months later, on April 30, 2019, Guaidó called for an uprising against Maduro, but the response wasn’t what Guaidó had hoped for, Trinkunas said.

“Apparently there had been a process of negotiation in the weeks leading up to April 30, in which the armed forces, the Supreme Court, and other significant regime figures agreed to a transition plan which would ease Maduro out and call for new elections,” Trinkunas said. “But it looks like Juan Guaidó pulled the trigger too quickly — he claims the plot was discovered.”

What’s Next? Three Possible Scenarios

Trinkunas sees three possible scenarios for Venezuela going forward: one in which Maduro is able to retain his power and the state of country remains relatively unchanged; another in which the government collapses and the country is able to transition into a democracy; or the Venezuelan government may collapse and things could take a turn for the worse, he said.

“Venezuela has experienced prolonged electricity blackouts in the last couple of months, and food distribution is very uncertain — things are breaking down,” he said. “There’s a real [possibility] that some of the organized crime organizations could break down the social order. It might look like a much more complicated situation.”

Related: Read a Q&A with Harold Trinkunas about Juan Guaidó’s claim to the Venezuelan presidency.

As China and Russia attack free governments and push strongman rule, the U.S. has gone silent—and a new tide of authoritarianism is gathering, writes Larry Diamond. Read here.