The picturesque northern Colombian village of Santa Clara, a three hour drive up deeply rutted dirt roads from the nearest town of Fundación, is disarmingly quiet save for children’s animated shouts from the school at the bottom of the hill.
There, in a modest classroom with a view of the Santa Marta Mountains, two Profamilia project advisers quiz teenagers on their sexual and reproductive rights, challenging them to shout out stereotypical ways that society defines men and women.
Between bouts of giggles, the teens prove they know a striking amount about the objectification of women, as well as about economic, physical and psychological abuse.
Ana Paola Argota, who has worked with Colombia’s largest family planning organization in the village since 2014, credits much of this knowledge to the regular workshops their team has hosted there.
In December, though, the program will halt — along with similar activities in 10 other municipalities — because Profamilia, a safe abortion provider, chose not to comply with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “global gag rule.”
The order, recently renamed the “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” policy, prevents all non-U.S. NGOs that provide services or information related to abortion from receiving U.S. government funding for any of their programs — no matter if those programs are unrelated to abortion, or if abortion is legal in that respective country.
Trump’s administration has significantly expanded the policy to include much of the United States’ global health assistance, placing more than $8.8 billion of funding on the line.
In Colombia, the amount of funding at risk may seem trivial at $1.2 million lost.
But for Santa Clara, the halt of sexual and reproductive health care brigades and education represents a blow to progress for a village that was for years caught in the gunfire and violence between the FARC and the AUC -- a particularly cruel Colombian paramilitary and drug trafficking group active in the Colombian armed conflict through the early 2000s.
Though Santa Clara has enjoyed relative peace since 2005, fallout from the war will be felt for years to come, said Hillary Sanchez Arengas, 31, who was born and raised in the mountain village and now acts as the elected leader of the local women’s group.
"We've spent a lot of time trying to improve the education for our children. We want them to have all the options we didn't." - Hillary Sanchez Arengas
Sexual and gender-based violence that became prevalent throughout years of armed conflict has seeped into the culture, becoming the norm in many rural villages throughout the country. Teenage pregnancy, too, has become an alarmingly regular occurrence.
The expanded policy doesn’t neatly shut down clinics that perform abortions, leaving other services untouched. In fact, Profamilia’s clinics will continue operating as normal. But the organization will forfeit $1.5 million for a maternal mortality program that never got off the ground, and another $300,000 for a Zika prevention program they were in the midst of designing to complement rural outreach in the north.
In Colombia, the policy translates most simply into 11 vulnerable municipalities losing community strengthening services. The town of Fundación and its surrounding areas have benefitted from Profamilia’s services since 2014.
Today, a Profamilia facilitator quizzes the group of women and a handful of men from the informal settlement of Villafani — of which 98 percent of residents are displaced — on their sexual and reproductive rights and encourages the group to share what they’d like to see in their households.
Young children, on the other hand — a seemingly overwhelming number of children for the amount of adults in attendance — are entertained with games a few houses down.
These community sessions have been highly important, according to 34-year-old women’s community leader Merlis Paola Castro Lugo, because the community doesn’t otherwise speak of the violence they’ve endured or the rights they are entitled to as women. Castro herself was a victim of sexual abuse and violence at the hands of the paramilitary, though she rarely speaks of it.
Currently, too many women in the settlement birth child after child, she added. Many have nine or more and little means to feed and care for them.
Having to abandon women in Villafani who have no other recourse for counseling or free contraception is is frustrating for Maria Elena Santodomingo Vascaino, Profamilia’s project adviser in the area — especially when she’s watched women grow braver in voicing their rights.
Compounding her frustration, Santodomingo isn’t confident the local government or health ministry will step up to fill the gap, especially for youth. Too many local health care providers are turning away 15- and 16-year-old girls if they ask for contraception, she said.
"It will be difficult for anyone else to keep up the programs with the same energy and same frequency," she added. “Right now, we can assist with populations the municipality doesn’t have resources for.”
"The government will face a tough choice of who to focus on." - Maria Elena Santodomingo Vascaino
So far, Profamilia has failed to identify funding elsewhere in order to continue the programs, citing competition among family planning providers in the country due to Trump’s policies as one of the main reasons.
