Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act: A Legislative Overview

Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act: A Legislative Overview

On Wednesday, April 29th, champions in the House and Senate introduced the Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act. This important legislation would block the implementation of the expanded Global Gag Rule, which has weaponized U.S. foreign assistance to restrict new funding, new issues, and new entities globally.

The Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act responds to a set of three new rules issued by the U.S. Department of State in January 2026 that significantly expand restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance. Although issued as separate regulatory actions, the rules were announced as a single policy and function as a coordinated package. The policy extends and deepens what is commonly known as the Global Gag Rule, also referred to as the Mexico City Policy or, in this iteration, “Promoting Human Flourishing.” They reshape how U.S. foreign assistance funding can be used and restrict what implementing partners are allowed to do, say, or support, even when using their own non-U.S. funds. Currently, the three rules apply only to “non-military” foreign assistance provided by the State Department. Still, they will be expanded to other departments and agencies that provide foreign aid, which will need to promulgate their own rules.

The policy exports an extremist agenda to ban abortion, erase transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people, restrict work on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and abandon work to advance gender equality and the rights of women and girls. This overreach threatens global health systems, weakens emergency response efforts, and silences the very providers working to save lives. It is dangerous and out of step with what effective, rights-based foreign policy should be. As PAI noted in our outside witness testimony on the fiscal year 2027 budget, the expanded Global Gag Rule will have devastating impacts on individuals, communities, and global health, development, and humanitarian systems. The Trump administration is making foreign aid less effective so that it can force its harmful agenda on people around the world and bully countries to fall in line. This expansion will exacerbate the crisis created by President Trump’s unilateral slashing of foreign aid programs and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The legislation would block the implementation and enforcement of the Global Gag Rule and any substantially similar future rules or policies. By stopping these rules from being attached to U.S. funding, the bill would restore the ability of aid recipients to operate without constraints tied to abortion-related speech or services and without additional ideological restrictions embedded in gender or equity programming.
By nullifying the deadly Global Gag Rule through the Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act, Congress is taking bold and decisive action to ensure that U.S. foreign assistance is grounded in evidence, human rights, and American values.

In the Senate, the bill is led by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV). The bill is led by Representatives Grace Meng (D-NY), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Diana DeGette (D-C), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Sara Jacobs (D-CA), and Gregory Meeks (D-NY) in the House.