Mexican City Policy Pt.2

When speaking about the Mexican City Policy, or Global Gag Rule, it is very easy to be opinionated. The democratic side is by far a side that supports the freedom of choice for women and fully supports the pro-choice movement. Many democratic articles are much more critical to our republican president, Donald Trump. The other side is the republican half, which is very clearly pro-life, meaning that they do not support abortion in any way. I believe that this is why it was created by a republican president, repealed by a democratic president, then once again reinstated by a republican president in 2017. I do believe that sources from more moderate sides support the same basic argument over and over. When looking at a democratic article, you will see many negative comments. One always being that Trump and his team (who are all white males) are taking away women’s reproductive rights. This is a very broad overstatement, Trump is not taking away a woman’s right to reproduce and he is not belittling women. Most of what the democratic sites post are sentences taken out of context, but are posted to make the audience think that he is saying the statement outright.

Second I would suggest that republican sites tend to be a lot more factual based, they do tend to leave out pertinent information that would make Trump look bad to a public eye. Instead of saying how he makes the policy “worse” they say how he improves the issue, a lot of re-wording is used to say the same thing as the democratic sites, but obviously in support of Trump.  I found in my studies that a democratic article will give solid facts and information, but label Trump as a monster. They do this by using the media’s title for the policy “The Global Gag Rule” and that Trump is “disappointing” women. Republican articles take a different approach and state that Trump is “Making America Great Again” and supporting women by “protecting” their reproductive rights. Since I did a deep analysis on two articles in my first blog post, I took a lighter approach to reading into the two sides on these other articles.

For further evidence, I read a democratic statement released from genderhealth.org. The article is titled in big, bold letters “TRUMP MARKS FIRST WEEK IN OFFICE BY BETRAYING WOMEN”, which the article then goes on to say that this is a way to promote unsafe abortions and that it will not make the U.S. investments more effective. The company behind this letter goes on to say that the signing of this policy is Trump’s way of saying he and his administration are “ hostile to women, health, and science.” I also noticed that in more democratic articles, they use the name Trump, rather than President Trump, which can be found in every republican article I have read.  The article then goes on to say how “women will fight these kinds of Machiavellian policies at every turn.”

The second article I read was a republican leaning one by Thehill.com. The article was titled “Trump reinstates ban on US funding for abortion overseas” and was written by Jessie Hellmann. In this article, Hellmann did not convey any emotion towards the policy, she just used statements that showed clear support.  One of those statements being: "I applaud President Trump for taking this important action and look forward to continuing to work together in advancing pro-life policies and protecting taxpayer dollars.” This statement shows clear support of the newly reinforced law, rather than using pathos, like a democratic article. Republican articles tend to be fact based, and with a touchy subject like abortion they are very clear to show the benefits of pro-life in their statements, and by using facts that alleviate the preconceptions that are false about the policy that everybody believes to be true.

SOURCES:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/abortion/315652-trump-signs-executive-order-reinstating-global-gag-rule-on
http://www.genderhealth.org/files/uploads/Trumps_Global_Gag.pdf