Nana, 24, walks back to her home in Betsingilo, Madagascar, with her five-year-old son. She has two children and recently received a birth control implant from a Marie Stopes International mobile clinic.
Credit: Carolyn Van Houten/Washington Post/Getty

In early 2017, Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK), the longest-running network of family planning clinics in the African country, faced a dilemma. For five decades, the organization had helped the community’s most vulnerable with services like HIV, testing, cervical cancer screening, free contraceptives, and abortion counseling and referrals.

But that year, as one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump banned federal aid for international organizations that so much as talk about abortion. So Family Health Options had to decide: stop offering abortion referrals and education to patients in need or lose $2 million in international aid. “It was a catastrophe,” Melvine Ouyo, a nurse and then a Family Health Options clinic director in Nairobi, said. Ultimately, her organization decided it couldn’t sacrifice the quality of care it provides to patients and refused to agree to the Trump administration’s new stipulations. “As someone […]