Devex: Mozambique’s teenage pregnancy challenge
“…Mozambique [is] one of the most progressive countries in Africa in providing sexual and reproductive health care for its young people. It has been the most successful of the FP2020 family planning partnership countries in increasing the proportion of women using modern contraceptives each year. … Around 80% of aid for reproductive health and family planning between 2015-2017 came from the United States. That left the country highly exposed when U.S. President Donald Trump implemented an expanded version of the ‘global gag rule,’ or Mexico City policy, in January 2017. … When the order kicked in later that year, NGOs in Mozambique [that did not agree to not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning with funding from any source as a condition for U.S. global health funding] lost millions of dollars. A stream of clinics were closed. Hundreds of jobs were lost. … Reproductive health advocates in Mozambique are now looking ahead to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in hopes that their funding might be returned. But even if it is, it will take a long time and additional funds to rebuild what was lost. Many say they are working hard to diversify their funding sources, so they won’t be so vulnerable to outside policy changes again” (Abrahams, 6/5).