The Planned Parenthood abortion business said today it will not comply with President Donald Trump’s new pro-life rules that require any recipient of federal taxpayer dollars for family planning to separate out any abortion business it does.
Because the nation’s largest abortion company is so wedded to its abortion business and refuses to separate it from its family planning operations, Planned Parenthood will lose as much as $60 million dollars in taxpayer funds. Officials with the abortion company told media outlets today that it would not comply with the new rules requiring separation.
As LifeNews reported this morning, President Trump has announced that his administration will implement new rules to partially defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business while his administration continues fighting a Planned Parenthood lawsuit designed to stop them.
Last week, a federal appeals court ruled President Donald Trump can partially defund planned Parenthood while the abortion business’ lawsuit against his administration’s new rules moves forward. The rules prohibit entities from receiving Title X funding if they run an abortion business at the same facility as their Title X-funded family planning organization. Planned Parenthood refuses to separate the two, thus it would lose federal funding.
Under the new directive, organizations receiving Title X funding now have to financially separate their family planning and abortion operations and have one year to physically separate their family planning and abortion operations.
But as AP reports, Planned Parenthood refuses to make either separation:
Planned Parenthood says it won’t comply with a Trump administration rule that bars taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring women for abortions.
Jacqueline Ayers, the organization’s top lobbyist, said Tuesday that Planned Parenthood clinics will stop accepting federal money as they press Congress and the courts to reverse the administration’s new requirement.
Ayers told The Associated Press in an interview that Planned Parenthood will tap emergency funding, but she’s not sure how long that can last. She says Planned Parenthood believes it is wrong for health care providers to withhold information from patients.
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The federal Department of Health and Human Services informed clinics Monday that it will begin enforcing the ban on abortion referrals, as well as a requirement that clinics maintain separate finances from facilities that provide abortions.
As LifeNews reported in March, the Trump administration finalized an administrative rule that would partially defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business and deprive it of as much as $60 million in taxpayer dollars. This action adds to President Trump’s record of defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion company.
Title X funds are supposed to be used to help low-income women and men receive birth control, cancer screenings and other health care services. While the tax money cannot be used to pay for abortions, it indirectly funds Planned Parenthood’s vast abortion business. The Trump administration can’t unilaterally defund the entirety of Planned Parenthood’s federal funds, which come from multiple sources and amount to over $550 million authorized by Congress, but in this area it can limit who receives this pool of funding.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration’s request to lift national injunctions ordered by lower federal courts in Oregon and Washington state, as well as a statewide injunction in California. The panel said the Trump administration will likely prevail in the legal battle over the Title X family planning program since similar Reagan-era rules were upheld by the Supreme Court almost 30 years ago.
The full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then blocked the defunding while considering the case further.
On July 11, the entire appeals court upheld defunding in a 7-4 decision with Republican-appointed judges upholding defended and Democrat judges forcing Americans to fund the abortion business.
The case will continue, likely to the Supreme Court, which upheld a similar rule during the Reagan administration, but the rules can be implemented now to begin the defunding process. That implementation of the “Protect Life Rule” delighted pro-life advocates.
“We thank President Trump and Secretary Azar for acting decisively to stop taxpayer funding of the abortion industry, as willed by the American people,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “A strong majority of Americans have consistently voiced their opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion – it is even unpopular among Democrats and self-described pro-choice Americans. Without reducing Title X funding by a dime, the Protect Life Rule simply draws a bright line between abortion and family planning, stopping abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood from treating Title X as their private slush fund. We are confident that the Trump administration will ultimately prevail and grateful that, in the meantime, the Protect Life Rule can immediately begin saving lives.”
The decision drew condemnation from Leana Wen, the CEO of the abortion giant.
“This is devastating news. While we are incredibly concerned the panel did not recognize the harm of the Trump-Pence administration’s gag rule, we will not stop fighting for the millions across the country in need for care,” she said on Twitter.
National Right to Life president Carol Tobias also praised President Trump and noted that the decision doesn’t adversely affect women’s health because the federal funds will go to legitimate family planning efforts instead of places that kill babies in abortions.
“We thank President Trump and Health & Human Services Secretary Azar for their numerous actions to restore pro-life policies,” she told LifeNews. “We are encouraged to see the announcement of Title X regulations that are back in line with previous policy that prevents federal dollars from being used to directly or indirectly promote abortion domestically.”
According to National Right to Life, during the Reagan Administration, regulations were issued, with National Right to Life’s strong support, to restore the original character of Title X by prohibiting referral for abortion except in life endangering circumstances. Additionally, abortion facilities could not generally share the same location with a Title X site.
In the 1991 Rust v. Sullivan decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found similar regulations permissible.
However, the Clinton Administration would later reverse these regulations.
A recent Marist poll found that, by a double-digit margin, a majority of all Americans oppose any taxpayer funding of abortion (54 percent to 39 percent).
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Author: Steven Ertelt
