At Least 1 Million Women and Girls Have Lost Access to Aid Because of Trump’s Funding Cuts

By now, there’s really no denying how dangerous Trump’s presidency has been for women’s health and rights, both at the domestic and global level. But beyond him upholding the laurels of a typical Republican president—by which I mean causing more pregnant deaths around the world per year because he, like his predecessors, won’t stop reimplementing a global gag rule—Trump can now check off having achieved the “worst-ever setback in official development assistance” from his reproductive fascism checklist. Nice one, Donald!

According to new data by U.N. Women, at least one million women have lost access to aid in the last 18 months, or since Trump became president in January 2025, amid giant funding cuts he’s imposed in office. These have been long-ranging, but to give you the general picture: he canceled 83% of USAID programs in March, slashed away billions of aid via his 2025 spending bill, and hollowed out the bipartisan PEPFAR program to combat HIV/AIDS. All of which, of course, has had detrimental consequences since.

But now, hundreds of women’s organizations are unable to meet their current levels of need, and about 84% of them also seeing an increased demand for their services because of the administration’s attacks on women’s health. 

According to Sofia Calltorp, the U.N. Women’s chief of humanitarian action, the U.N. spoke to 855 women’s organizations across 52 countries to obtain the data, 90% of which said they’re overswamped with demand. “Every dollar withdrawn from women’s organizations is a dollar withdrawn from survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, displaced mothers, girls forced from school and communities struggling to survive,” Calltorp said in a statement. 

Currently, armed conflicts are the worst they’ve been in decades. But nearly 1 in 5 of these 855 organizations believe they’ll have to shutter their services, either temporarily or permanently, by 2027. 

Of course, none of this is either helped by the fact that Trump in January withdrew the U.S. from several U.N. and international organizations specifically focusing on women’s rights and sexual health—or that, in March, the U.S. voted “no” on advancing women’s rights at the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, just so it could propel its own anti-DEI discourse. 

“The women’s organizations at risk of being shut down are on the frontlines of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises,” Capptorp says. “Without immediate action, the organizations that have kept women and girls alive through the world’s worst crises risk becoming another casualty of war.”

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