Why the “Safe from the Start” Initiative Fuels the Global Abortion Movement

By | May 9, 2023

The “Safe from the Start” (SftS) initiative was launched by the Obama administration in 2013 as part of a broader effort to promote the empowerment and protection of women and girls worldwide, with a specific focus on preventing and responding to gender-based violence in emergencies.  While this is a worthy goal, this initiative has directed funding to pro-abortion groups.  The Biden administration recently announced its plan to update and “revision” the initiative, and given the administration’s stance on abortion and gender ideology, it will undoubtedly be used to advance those issues, including in countries with pro-life and pro-family governments and laws. SftS is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) framework governing humanitarian initiatives in various U.S. bureaus, NGOs, and other agencies in the international humanitarian system. The guidelines and initiatives found within SftS are executed by U.S. government foreign assistance locations and other partnering organizations across the globe, incorporating U.S. contentious humanitarian guidelines in their assistance without the oversight of recipient countries.

Major partners and funding recipients of SftS promote abortion around the world

Among the leading partners of SftS are CARE International, the Women’s Refugee Commission, and the International Rescue Committee, which are NGOs that explicitly promote abortion.  CARE International promotes abortion as a method of family planning in crisis settings where SftS functions: “we support access to high-quality, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health counseling, education and services including contraception and voluntary family planning services…[and] safe abortion and post-abortion care.” Similarly, the International Rescue Committee falsely claims, “under international humanitarian law, denial of safe abortion care for women and girls raped in conflict amounts to inhumane treatment and is a violation of their human rights.” Condemning the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Women’s Refugee Commission declared that “Safe abortion is health care and the right and ability to access it should be upheld.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross supports abortion as health care, particularly in times of conflict, quoting the WHO which stated, “the protection of women from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment requires that those who have become pregnant as the result of coerced or forced sexual acts can lawfully access safe abortion services.” These organizations, and more, cooperate with the SftS initiative and push abortion as a primary means of healing women in conflict. SftS also channels funding to UN agencies that promote abortion as both a human right and a humanitarian necessity, including the World Health Organization and UNFPA.

SftS operates in concert with a framework of strategy documents that contain language supporting abortion and radical gender ideology

Under the previous Obama administration, USAID and the Department of State issued a variety of global strategy documents including the 2013 “U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence Globally” which includes multiple references to “reproductive health,” as well as a definition of “gender-based violence” that explicitly included “sexual and gender minorities.”  A 2016 update expanded its glossary to contain more terms related to sexual orientation and gender identity.  At the national and international level, the term “gender-based violence,” as opposed to “violence against women and girls,” has widely been used to reframe programs to focus on LGBTQ issues instead of women’s protection and empowerment.

Without strong pro-life protections, a multi-stakeholder project to respond to gender-based violence in crises will be hijacked by abortion activists

The Biden administration has made clear its desire to do away with pro-life safeguards on U.S. foreign aid and mainstream LGBTQ issues both throughout the government and abroad.  UN agencies have increasingly promoted abortion as a right, despite the lack of global consensus, using terms like “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “safe abortion” that are highly controversial in the General Assembly. The 2023 USAID Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy, which applies to all USAID frameworks and gender strategies, reinforces and affirms this problematic language, defining biological women out of existence, prioritizing gender and LGBTQ issues as matters of greatest social concern, especially in economic contexts, and seeking to challenge the gender binary and uproot “inequitable gender norms, discrimination, and barriers to empowerment.” Furthermore, it is difficult if not impossible to ensure any accountability regarding funding from the U.S. government to UN agencies—the major beneficiaries of SftS.

The initiative was updated in early December 2022, titled “Safe from the Start ReVisioned” with increased controversial language.

The term “gender-transformative,” a recent addition to progressive policy language in the past year, was added in the new initiative. A gender-transformative approach seeks to shift “funding, influence, and decision-making power” to “gender minorities” in addition to women and girls. This approach is replete with progressive sexual ideology, seeking to uproot social cultural norms and promote abortion and other methods as “empowerment.” Listed as a priority action, the updated initiative “feminizes and localizes the humanitarian system,” allowing greater funding, freedom, and influence to abortion and feminist “empowerment” groups on the ground. SftS ReVisioned operates in tandem with the 2022 U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, which is incorporated, among all other strategies, in the new USAID 2023 Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy.

Despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the initiative aligns with documents claiming a constitutional and international right to abortion without qualification.

The document states that the efforts of Safe from the Start ReVisioned align with the values of the National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, even though it is a domestic strategy. The national strategy document is replete with language that is associated with abortion, LGBTQ policies, and threats to religious liberty. Even though abortion is controversial both in the U.S. and in countries receiving U.S. aid, the global pro-abortion movement will benefit greatly from U.S. support enabled by these policy documents and in the absence of adequate safeguards, such as the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy.

Even though the U.S. constitutional right to abortion was overturned, Safe from the Start ReVisioned still cites the strategy document on Gender Equality, which claims that “[the U.S. Government] will ensure equitable access to high-quality, affordable health care; [and] protect the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion,” without any qualifications or amendment acknowledging the overturning of the “constitutional right”.  Moreover, the Presidential Memorandum on Protecting Women and Girls at Home and Abroad is also cited, which explicitly decries pro-life amendments and supports international abortion efforts. While the USAID initiative does not explicitly cite abortion as an objective, it uses the same language of, among other terms, women’s “life-saving” care and “reproductive health and rights,” terms twisted to promote abortion and gender policy in the Biden administration.

Safe from the Start is part of a range of Actions by the Executive Branch to unilaterally undermine and reinterpret the Helms Amendments to eventually allow for U.S. funding.

The Biden administration already faces pressure from the abortion lobby to reinterpret the Helms amendment, a current law banning direct funding for overseas abortion, to allow for exceptions, notably including cases of rape. The effectiveness of the Helms amendment depends on its lack of exceptions, as allowing U.S. funding to be used to procure abortion drugs and implements, or to train health workers to perform abortions, will inevitably exceed the relatively narrow categories exceptional cases in practice.

Gender-based violence policies and responses in humanitarian settings are the means most likely to be used to circumvent the Helms Amendment and reinterpret it to allow abortion in cases where abortion is not being used “as a method of family planning.” Therefore, it is not enough to exclude explicit language referencing “abortion” and “reproductive health” from initiatives and policies aimed at violence prevention and response. The reinterpretation seeks to include exceptions to the law—particularly for wartime rape, which is a major focus of SftS.  If such a reinterpretation were to be announced, it would open the floodgates of funding for organizations intent on delivering death in the guise of health care to those who are already suffering the most in crisis situations.

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