A doctored image of Hillary Clinton signing a bill banning men from ejaculating “unless it’s for reproduction” has been shared thousands of times online in a bid to highlight the “absurdity” of Donald Trump’s actions in the past week.
Women’s rights activists from the French group 52 edited the image, which originally featured Barack Obama, and shared it on their Facebook page earlier this week.
An accompanying post read: “If.. we had brought in a world where the matriarchal society crushes the rights of men, forced to fight for the fight against sexism and oppression they suffer on a daily basis?
“And if women were to their male counterparts the prohibition of ejaculating if this is not to make babies?
“Do you think it’s absurd? Yet, this is what happens to women, in this moment in the United States: their rights are threatened by white men, cisgenres, elected at the head of the country of uncle Sam.
“Only two days after the women’s March, which brought together millions of demonstrators in the streets of Washington and in the world, Donald Trump signed his first decree anti-abortion.”
On Monday Trump signed an anti-abortion executive order while surrounded by men in the Oval office which cut about $600 million a year in international assistance for family planning and reproductive health.
A picture of the Global Gag Rule signing led many to point out that there will never be an image of seven women signing leglislation about what men can do with their reproductive organs.
The group 52 decided to take it a step further by doctoring an image depicting just that.
A tweet featuring the false image, which reads ‘it is now illegal to ejaculate, unless it’s for reproduction’, has been retweeted more than 103,000 times and liked by more than 230,000 people.
The original image featured Obama signing a bill to recognise women airforce service pilots.
In one of his first acts as president this week, Trump reinstated the ban on American money from going to international health organisations that counsel on abortion as a family planning option.
Last year American money helped 27 million women access contraceptives a year, preventing two million unsafe abortions and six million unwanted pregnancies, according to analysis by the Guttmacher Institute.
Last week, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said she would seek to introduce legislation to ban the gag rule permanently, after successive presidents have revoked and reinstated it.
She told Foreign Policy: “I will continue to stand up to President Trump and Republican leadership in Congress who are intent on rolling back women’s access to reproductive healthcare, and will soon be introducing bipartisan legislation aimed to repeal the Global Gag Rule for good.
“Women around the world deserve to make important personal health care decisions without politicians in Washington interfering.”
The action led to Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade And Development, Lilianne Ploumen, to launch a fund to support those affected.
What is the Global Gag Rule?
The Global Gag Rule, also called the Mexico City Policy, prevents US foreign aid from going to any organisation that counsels women on abortion.
It was first put in place by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Since then, it has been revoked or reinstated every time the party in the White House has changed. It was revoked by Barack Obama in 2009, having been reinstated by George W. Bush in 2001 after Bill Clinton revoked it in 1993.
The end of US money to help women in developing countries be counselled on abortion could have deadly consequences.
The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 21 million women a year have unsafe abortions in the developing world, which accounts for about 13% of all maternal deaths.
US foreign aid has not gone to organisations that carry out abortions since 1973, when the Helms Amendment was introduced preventing this.
Trump’s executive order was signed on the 44th anniversary of Roe vs Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that held a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion.
Campaigners fear Trump’s election places it under threat.