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The Trump administration’s efforts to restrict the availability of abortions around the world have been dented – but not defeated – by international pledges of funding for organisations promoting women’s health.

On 2 March, representatives of more than 50 countries met in Brussels at the invitation of She Decides, an initiative launched by Dutch minister Lilianne Ploumen to push back against the so-called global gag rule, which denies US federal funding for non-governmental organisations that provide abortions or discuss the procedure. Around $600 million of funding a year will be lost.

So far, just over $190 million has been pledged, which will be directed to international aid groups whose funding is threatened. Of the 12 countries who offered donations, Finland and Sweden pledged the most with around $21 million each. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $20 million over four years and an anonymous US donor pledged $50 million.

Since its inception in 1984, the gag rule – officially called the Mexico City policy – has been alternately imposed and repealed as control of the White House changes hands. The Trump administration reinstated it in January, and further expanded it to include all global health programmes funded through US government agencies.

Previously, roughly $575 million of funding fell under the policy, but the new rule also applies to foreign aid funding for maternal and child health, HIV and AIDS, malaria, and infectious diseases. Any organisation receiving US federal funding for these services cannot discuss or provide abortion services, or they risk losing funding, says , director of public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organisation committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health rights in the US.

“There are many more foreign non-governmental organisations today that are funded under the US programme than there had been in the past, and that was a deliberate move to empower groups on the ground. But this goes in the opposite direction,” Boonstra says.

Withholding funds from healthcare providers who perform or discuss abortion services has a trickle-down effect on wider healthcare, she adds. “Reproductive health is really why a lot of women enter into the healthcare system and from there they receive services across the board, whether it’s for HIV prevention or tuberculosis or malaria,” she says.

In his closing remarks to the She Decides conference, Alexander De Croo, Belgium’s deputy prime minister and minister of development cooperation, said: “Our work has only started. We are not here to run a sprint. We are here to start a marathon.”

De Croo said they hope to convene again at future women’s rights and human rights meetings, including the UN General Assembly in September.

Read more: Women’s access to birth control and abortion fading under Trump