By Dave Andrusko
Monday, the day before Planned Parenthood axed its new president, the Trump Administration notified Title X family planning recipients that it is immediately barring grantees from performing or referring for abortions. A separate provision of the rule requiring a clean financial and physical separation between abortion providers and other services will take effect next year.
As NRL News Today has reported on numerous occasions, this requirement that grantees not be involved in abortion was there from the beginning of the Title X program but ignored by pro-abortion administrations.
Planned Parenthood, the largest recipient of Title X funds, “confirmed Monday night it won’t comply with the new rules,” POLITICO reported. “The organization said its clinics will start using their own emergency funds while it continues to fight the rule in court,” according to Alice Miranda Ollstein and Rachel Roubein.
The Trump Administration’s rules, finalized in February, have been challenged by a number of states. However, first a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, then the full court upheld the rules, lifting the injunctions that had blocked the rule from being enforced.
Although heavily pro-abortion over the years, the 9th Circuit noted that the Supreme Court upheld a virtual identical set of regulations from the Reagan era. The states and/or Planned Parenthood can attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to hear their challenge, but the odds against success are daunting.
In lifting the injunction, the three-judge panel concluded, “Absent a stay, HHS will be forced to allow taxpayer dollars to be spent in a manner that it has concluded violates the law, as well as the Government’s important policy interest in ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not go to fund or subsidize abortions.” The rule was a “reasonable interpretation” of Title X and supported the government’s “important policy interest” in ensuring that taxpayer dollars not fund or subsidize abortions.