Domestic Causes, Global Consequences: The US Mexico City Policy's Global Impact on Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract How does donor domestic ideology and partisan politics shape the lives of people in aid-dependent countries? In this paper, we study the impact of the United States Mexico City Policy, which—when in place—prohibits the disbursement of United States aid funds to foreign Non-Governmental Organizations that provide information or services related to abortion care. Since its 1984 inception, every Democratic president has rescinded it, while every Republican has reinstated it. While previous global public health studies reveal how the Mexico City Policy has actually increased unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion rates, we argue that these unintended consequences go further than previously understood. We argue that when women lose access to abortion care, they are more likely to lose their lives and suffer life-changing injuries due to violence by their partners. Using global data on United States aid and the health burden caused by intimate partner violence against women in up to 204 countries and territories between 1993 and 2019, we show that the burden of deaths and disability attributed to intimate partner violence increases by approximately 16 percent when the Mexico City Policy is in place.