Dutch-Led Fund Raises $300 Million To Replace U.S. Funding For Sexual Health

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An effort to help global sexual health charities losing support under the Trump administration has reached a new milestone: $300 million in fundraising.

The Dutch government revealed the new figure on Friday. The "She Decides" initiative — the brainchild of one Dutch official — kicked off earlier this year, and announced $190 million in funding as of early March.

Thanks to "ongoing enthusiasm," donations from nations, organizations and individuals have since continued to flow in. Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which also supports NPR) have all pledged new funding, the Dutch statement says, while Rwanda, Chad, South Africa, South Korea, Senegal, Nigeria and Mozambique have signed on as "friends" of the initiative.

"It's fantastic to see how the funding gap is shrinking month by month," Lilianne Ploumen, the foreign trade and development cooperation minister who is running the initiative, said in the statement.

The fundraising effort began after President Trump reinstated the "Mexico City policy." That's a rule that says U.S. foreign aid cannot be sent to any organization that provides or "promotes" abortion, which can include providing information about abortion.

Generally, Republican administrations impose the Mexico City policy and Democratic ones don't. But Trump went further than past presidents. Previous versions of the Mexico City policy applied to reproductive health funding — about $600 million a year. But the new policy covers all global health funding, more than $8 billion annually.

As NPR's Nurith Aizenman reported in January, "It remains to be seen how much of that goes to groups that currently provide or promote abortion as defined by the policy — and that would opt to give up U.S. aid dollars rather than falling in line."

In March, Nurith wrote about the origin of the She Decides program. Ploumen, the minister who launched it, told Nurith she was disappointed by Trump's decision to reinstate the policy — then realized she was "in a position to do something":