Pres. Trump moves to defund Planned Parenthood

Salem, OR–The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services will be reinstating rules for the Title X family planning program that will bar abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer funding through this specific program. This will cut roughly $50 to $60 million of Planned Parenthood’s $543.7 million in taxpayer funding (per PP’s 2016-2017 annual report).

“Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of abortions,” says Lois Anderson, ORTL executive director. “In recent years, the number of prenatal services Planned Parenthood provides has plummeted. What is not plummeting is the percentage of annual U.S. abortions they perform. They make money off ending families, not ‘planning’ them. They are not a ‘family planning’ provider and should not be funded as such.”

Under the new rules, none of the family planning funding will be cut. It will be redirected to the roughly 4,000 Title X service providers around the nation (as opposed to only 443 Planned Parenthood businesses).

Congress created Title X in 1970 with strong anti-abortion language in the statute. It was only intended to be a preventative family planning program. However, after Roe v. Wade, this language decayed. Title X grantees were eventually required to routinely refer all pregnant women regarding abortion as a “pregnancy management option.”

During the Reagan administration, those requirements were reversed and the original character of Title X was restored. Providers could only refer for abortion in life-endangering circumstances. Title X facilities could not share the same location as an abortion facility. However, the Clinton administration reversed those protections enacted under Reagan.

“President Trump is returning Title X to Congress’s original intent,” says Anderson. “This will only remove 10% of Planned Parenthood’s current federal funding. It is not enough but it is an important first step.”