SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
reproductive rights
Human Rights Watch Calls Out 'Troubling Conditions' in Trump Health Aid Agreements With Africa
“After the sudden and devastating pullback from US assistance in 2025, governments are now being pressured to accept agreements with contingencies that jeopardize human rights."
Jun 08, 2026
The Trump administration is requiring African nations to agree to a series of "troubling conditions" to restore lifesaving health aid, according to a Human Rights Watch report on Monday.
The administration's abrupt shuttering of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) last year shut off billions of dollars and caused havoc across Africa's healthcare system, resulting in what public health models project could be hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
But under what has been dubbed the “America First” Global Health Strategy, the administration has negotiated secretive agreements with dozens of these countries to restore some of the funding. Most of them have been kept under lock and key by the US.
Those that have been made public have come with terms that Human Rights Watch said "raise concerns that health aid is being inappropriately leveraged to extract terms beneficial to the US in negotiations around natural resources and access to sensitive health data from recipient countries."
In March, a draft memorandum of understanding with the government of Zambia was revealed to have conditioned $1 billion for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other disease prevention for millions of people, on the country's acceptance of a separate bilateral treaty that would have given US companies greater access to the country's minerals.
A leaked State Department memo, prepared for Secretary Marco Rubio, put the exploitative terms plainly: “We will only secure our priorities by demonstrating willingness to publicly take support away from Zambia on a massive scale.”
After the details of that agreement were met with backlash, the text of agreements with several other countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda—were suddenly removed from the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act Library.
A Human Rights Watch assessment of the agreements with those five countries—as well as agreements with Rwanda and Liberia that were leaked—revealed that in order to restore a portion of the more than $800 million collectively stripped from them by the US, they'd have to agree to several coercive measures that jeopardize the reproductive and privacy rights of their citizens.
“The agreements show the US intends to condition vital health assistance for millions of people on acquiescence to troubling conditions,” said Julia Bleckner, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. “After the sudden and devastating pullback from US assistance in 2025, governments are now being pressured to accept agreements with contingencies that jeopardize human rights.”
All seven of the agreements require the governments to provide the US with "broad access to data and information" to monitor compliance with the Helms Amendment, which forbids the use of US foreign assistance to pay for abortion care.
The agreements with Mozambique, Rwanda, and Liberia require them to provide “any data” requested by the US to ensure compliance with the amendment, while Uganda's permits the US to conduct unannounced spot checks of health facilities and clinics.
"By making a broad package of health aid contingent on broad and potentially invasive surveillance of Helms compliance, the agreement could encourage a more restrictive regulation of abortion than national law mandates and give rise to further violations of the right to healthcare,” says the report.
The agreements also give the US permission to directly audit clinics, laboratories, and health programs to ensure compliance with the conditions. Six of them require clinics to provide access to "any data" requested by the US at a sample of facilities it chooses.
Agreements with five countries also mandate that they share biological specimens taken from patients and associated information related to novel infectious diseases, which HRW described as part of an effort to undermine a global pathogen access and sharing system being created by the World Health Organization, from which Trump has removed the US.
HRW said in a news release:
The agreements raise serious concerns about use of people’s private health data, without clear limits, uniform safeguards, or meaningful protections for patient confidentiality, including in several countries with weak or absent domestic data protection laws. The agreements contain no prohibition on this data being shared with US pharmaceutical companies without patient consent.
“Governments negotiating health assistance agreements with the United States face difficult choices,” Bleckner said. “They should be wary of terms asking them to sign away their populations’ rights and push for the inclusion of civil society representatives and multilateral global health organizations like the Global Fund in deliberations.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Her Charade Is Over': Platner Slams Collins for Skipping Abortion Hearings Since Roe Reversal
The Maine Republican was a decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh, "and in the years since Roe was overturned, Susan Collins has done everything she can to skirt responsibility and avoid accountability," said the Democrat.
May 22, 2026
As part of Graham Platner's campaign to oust Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, the Democrat on Friday called out the five-term senator for skipping committee hearings on reproductive healthcare, including abortion, since the US Supreme Court that she helped build overturned Roe v. Wade.
Reproductive freedom advocates across Maine have renewed efforts to replace Collins since she voted to confirm various anti-choice judicial nominees during President Donald Trump's first term, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault, in 2018.
Kavanaugh is part of the far-right supermajority that reversed Roe with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022, which led to a fresh wave of state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
Beacon, run by the Maine People's Alliance, reported Friday that since the Dobbs ruling, Collins has not attended any Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee "meetings focused on abortion or reproductive healthcare," according to the panel's hearing reports.
They included the July 2022 hearing titled "Reproductive Care in a Post-Roe America: Barriers, Challenges, and Threats to Women's Health" and the June 2024 hearing titled "The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Healthcare Nightmare Across America."
More broadly, the Beacon noted, "Collins has also missed more than half of all possible HELP Committee meetings during her current term. Between 2021 and March 2026, she did not attend 67 of 125 possible HELP Committee and relevant subcommittee hearings."
Since launching his campaign last year, Platner has repeatedly called out Collins for demonstrating "symbolic opposition" to Trump while enabling his agenda and serving the interests of wealthy donors instead of working people. The combat veteran and oyster farmer—who's now the presumptive Democratic nominee after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the primary race last month—similarly took aim at his opponent in response to the new reporting.
"Thanks to Susan Collins' decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh, the freedom to choose was stolen from millions of women. And in the years since Roe was overturned, Susan Collins has done everything she can to skirt responsibility and avoid accountability—from skipping hearings to avoiding town halls at all costs," said Platner in a statement.
"In November, Susan Collins will learn she can only run and hide from her damaging votes for so long. Because whether she knows it or not—her charade is over," added the Democrat, who has been open about his family's fertility struggles during the campaign.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Supreme Court Temporarily Extends Abortion Pill Access, But 'Care Is Still Under Attack Every Day'
"Mifepristone is safe and effective, and women should be able to get abortion medication through the mail or telehealth if they need," said Sen. Patty Murray.
May 11, 2026
Defenders of reproductive rights, including key Democrats in Congress, reiterated the safety of mifepristone on Monday after the US Supreme Court temporarily extended access to the medication—commonly used in abortion and miscarriage care—by mail while the justices review a ruling from a notoriously right-wing appellate court.
The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit blocked a federal rule allowing mifepristone to be dispensed by mail at the beginning of the month. Drugmakers quickly appealed to the high court, where Justice Samuel Alito, who is part of the right-wing supermajority, issued a one-week stay to give himself and colleagues time to review the case.
As Alito's initial Monday evening deadline approached, he extended the stay until 5:00 pm ET on Thursday. The move means that "for now, mifepristone is still available via telehealth, mail order, and pharmacy while the case proceeds," noted the Democratic Women's Caucus in the US House of Representatives.
However, pro-choice advocates and policymakers are still sounding the alarm and arguing that, as the caucus put it in a social media post, "reproductive freedom should not depend on emergency rulings or political attacks."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement that "mifepristone has been safe, effective, and trusted for decades. Today's order keeps access in place for now, but it's not cause for celebration—it's a reminder that basic reproductive care is still under attack every day. Anti-abortion extremists are trying to use the courts to roll back access to medication abortion nationwide, and Senate Dems will keep fighting to protect women's freedom to make their own healthcare decisions."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) similarly wrote on social media: "Another extension, but this shouldn't be complicated. Mifepristone is safe and effective, and women should be able to get abortion medication through the mail or telehealth if they need. Extremist judges shouldn't get to decide how women get healthcare."
This case traces back to early 2023, when the Biden administration's Food and Drug Administration permanently lifted mifepristone's in-person dispensing requirement, just months after the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade. Louisiana, which has among the most restrictive abortion policies in the country, sued over the FDA's policy change.
Medication abortions account for the majority of abortions provided in the United States, and those patients generally take both mifepristone and another drug, misoprostol. Demand for abortion pills by mail increased after Roe's reversal, as advocates of forced pregnancy policies in Republican-controlled states ramped up attacks on reproductive freedom.
"With the Supreme Court punting a decision on access to mifepristone—a safe, effective medication used in abortion care—until later this week, patients and providers are left facing continued uncertainty," said Rachel Fey, interim co-CEO of Power to Decide. "Wondering day by day whether you'll have access to an essential medication is not practical, and the confusion only deepens the barriers people already face when seeking abortion care."
"Access to mifepristone should be based on scientific evidence, not ideology," Fey declared. "We urge the Supreme Court to follow that science and maintain current telehealth access to mifepristone—not just for a few days at a time, but permanently."
Alito's extensions in recent days are not necessarily signals of where the conservative will ultimately come down. The Associated Press pointed out Monday that "the current dispute is similar to one that reached the court three years ago," when the justices blocked another 5th Circuit ruling "over the dissenting votes of Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas," and then unanimously dismissed that case due to lack of standing, or a legal right to sue.
The battle comes as the Trump administration's FDA is conducting a review of mifepristone that Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, has said seems "designed to manufacture an excuse for further restricting medication abortion across the country."
The New York Times noted Monday that US Department of Justice "lawyers have not said in court proceedings or publicly whether they back regulations that allow people to be prescribed the pills through telehealth appointments. Instead, they have asked the lower courts to pause the litigation to give the FDA time to complete a review of the safety of mifepristone, which was first approved in 2000."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular