Penna Dexter

The US Department of Health and Human Services is issuing a rule that lines up with the principle that abortion is not health care.

The Trump HHS is updating a rule to bring the Title X Family Planning Grant Program back in line with what existed under the Ronald Reagan administration. President Reagan’s “protect life rule” prevented family planning clinics from receiving this grant money from being located in the same facility as abortion providers. The proposed rule requires Title X grant recipients to draw a bright line, ensuring strict separation – both physical and financial – between family planning programs and abortion. Family planning services include birth control, STD and certain cancer screenings, pregnancy tests, and well-woman exams.

The administration is not trying to reduce the dollars spent on this program — about $50 to 60 million per year. But Planned Parenthood will have to choose: either drop abortion from any locality where family planning services are provided or do without this federal money.

The proposal doesn’t totally defund Planned Parenthood, which received over $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars over the past three years. That’s still up to Congress.

But, this is an important component of ending taxpayers’ forced partnership with the abortion industry. Reagan-era regulations that accomplished this were upheld by the US Supreme Court in the 1991 case, Rust vs. Sullivan.

 The Clinton administration issued regulations removing this wall of separation. Surprisingly President George W. Bush never reinstated the rule. President Obama made it worse by prohibiting states from defunding or deprioritizing abortion with their Title X money.

Six in ten Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion. And women get the best care at non-abortion health centers.  Currently, Planned Parenthood uses Title X family planning funds to do the exam or pregnancy test at its clinic and just refers a woman for an on-site abortion. It’s good this administration is reinstating the rule that ensures taxpayers do not pay for this.