People protesting and sign saying Portman why don't you Fight4her

Over 40 #Fight4HER activists protested January 23 outside Senator Rob Portman’s Columbus office against President Trump’s dangerous Global Gag Rule, a deadly policy that bans foreign health care providers that receive U.S. aid from discussing abortion. The activists held a die-in on the steps of Senator Portman’s office. A die-in is a protest where participants simulate being dead to represent the number of people killed due to Trump's deadly Rule. Attendees called on Portman to support the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights (HER) Act and end the Global Gag Rule, once and for all.

It’s been three years since Trump reinstated and expanded the Rule, that cuts off access to health care, including contraceptives and safe abortion, ultimately forcing patients who experience unwanted pregnancies to seek unsafe back-alley abortions.

The Population Connection Action Fund states that the Global Gag Rule “stifles democratic participation by prohibiting assistance to organizations that speak out about the impact of unsafe abortion in their own countries – and, to be clear, it’s simply impossible to have a serious discussion about women’s health and maternal mortality in the developing world without discussing the role of illegal, unsafe abortion. In 2011, independent researchers at Stanford University found that the imposition of the Global Gag Rule caused abortion rates in the African countries most affected to double between 2001 and 2008, when the policy was being enforced.”

A letter to the editor by Audrey Leopold in Forest, Ohio, summed up the devastating results of Trump’s Rule: “Every year, up to 31,000 women die from unsafe abortions, nearly all in developing countries.”