The Trump administration is announcing its intentions to cut a significant amount of taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses. The proposed regulation will also better protect victims of sexual assault, incest and rape because it will require that any Title X-funded projects document their compliance with state reporting laws when they encounter potential victims.
In 1970, Title X was enacted by Congress to to provide federal tax dollars for what is termed family planning — but also explicitly banned funding for abortion, stating, “None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” In 1988, the Reagan administration put regulations in place which mandated that “Title X programs may not promote, counsel, or refer clients for abortion or co-locate or combine family planning services with abortion activities.” It also required “not only complete financial separation, but also physical separation of abortion activities from Title X service sites and separate personnel.”
The Supreme Court upheld the Reagan regulations in 1991 in Rust v. Sullivan, but when pro-abortion President Bill Clinton took office, he reversed them. Recently, almost 200 lawmakers sent a letter to Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, urging that the Reagan regulations be put back into place, albeit without prohibiting counseling for abortion.
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“Unlike the Reagan regulation, the proposal will not prohibit counseling for clients about abortion, but neither will it include the current, potentially illegal mandate that projects must counsel and refer for abortion,” an administration official said in an interview with the Weekly Standard. “This proposal does not necessarily defund Planned Parenthood, as long as they’re willing to disentangle taxpayer funds from abortion as a method of family planning, which is required by the Title X law. Any grantees that perform, support, or refer for abortion have a choice – disentangle themselves from abortion or fund their activities with privately raised funds.”
The Susan B. Anthony List noted in a press release, “The ‘Protect Life Rule‘ will fulfill a campaign promise made by President Trump to stop taxpayer funding of abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood… [and] will direct tax dollars to Title X centers that do not promote or perform abortions…. Similar regulations were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1991 in Rust v. Sullivan (500 U.S. 173).” SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser noted that Planned Parenthood “is responsible for more than 300,000 abortions a year and has been receiving $50-60 million in Title X taxpayer funds annually.”
Any tax dollars cut from abortion chains like Planned Parenthood will instead be redirected to legitimate health care providers — like community health care centers — which vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities. (Comprehensive health care clinics throughout the nation can be found here.)
Planned Parenthood receives half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding every single year — despite the fact that its health care services are continually decreasing, while its abortions are increasing. Planned Parenthood tries to masquerade itself as a legitimate health care organization, claiming that abortion is only 3 percent of what it does, but this is a lie.
The reality is simple: Planned Parenthood is not a health care organization, and it only serves a small percentage of women. The abortion corporation continually misleads the public about the services it provides (as in the cases of mammograms and prenatal care), and its priority is clearly abortion. Most Americans are also against taxpayer-funded abortions. It’s long past time for Planned Parenthood to be defunded — and hopefully, this is the first step.
