Trump could kill tens of thousands of pregnant women

Nearly 800 women die every day worldwide during pregnancy and childbirth. Reducing maternal mortality is therefore a global challenge and one of the UN's Millennium Goals, writes Sputnik analyst Piotr Tsvetov.

This problem is primarily a concern of Asian, African, Latin American countries, not of the United States and developed countries in Western Europe. In poor countries, many women die during childbirth because of lack of essential care, or because they do not know the basic rules of female behavior during childbirth.

Photo: Fotolia/ Andy Dean

For many years now, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has been implementing perinatal programmes around the world, including midwifery training in the least developed countries. As a result, maternal mortality rates have fallen dramatically in developing countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Mongolia and Timor. The biggest contributor to these programmes has been the United States… until Donald Trump became president of the United States. He decided to stop funding the organisation because he disagreed with the fact that UNFPA experts in some cases recommended abortion to save a woman’s life.

Since 1984, Republican presidents have also opposed abortion, but only Mr. Trump has applied "sanctions" against international organizations, and even called it "pro-life".

It seems that billionaire Trump does not realize that in some cases, a woman's natural desire to have children can lead to her death. And such cases are not uncommon. According to the World Health Organization, in the modern world, more women die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth than from military action. And according to calculations by Mr. Trump's opponents, the new bill could lead to the deaths of 20,000 pregnant women worldwide.

Some feminists in the US Senate criticized the bill proposed by Mr. Trump, but it did not bring results. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson supported the President's decision, saying that the bill would have minimal international consequences. However, more and more people in the world are outraged by the US president's actions on the international stage. The New Yorker magazine called Trump's policy "a daily nightmare of frustration". Very accurate assessment!

According to Sputnik