The Trump Administration today made an excellent decision that speeds up the process of defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The Administration has put forward new rules that would prohibit abortion companies like Planned Parenthood from receiving Family Planning funds under the title 10 program. The process of adopting new federal rules takes time and the last round of grants awarded in the program were not able to be subjected to those new pro-life rules.
Typically, Title X Family Planning grant recipients receive funding for a three-year period. Knowing that the new pro-life rules prohibiting funding to abortion businesses would be taking effect later this year or beginning next year, the Trump Administration shortened the length of the Family Planning grants to just 7 months. That makes it so the Grants awarded to Planned Parenthood expire much sooner and the abortion company would have to go through the process again and obey the new rules.
Today’s decision by the Trump Administration makes it so the process of defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion giant will take place much sooner. Moreover, if the new rules did not go into effect until three years from now there is the potential that they could be rescinded or not applied by a pro-abortion president elected in 2020. The move ensures there is an opportunity to defund Planned Parenthood of one of its major funding streams before the end of President Trump’s first term.
Abortion advocates are not happy about this age decision. As The Hill reports:
“Shortened and inconsistent program grant cycles that force Title X entities to semi-annually compete for funding causes undue administrative burden, detracting from health care providers’ daily work of delivering high-quality preventive health care in communities across the country,” said Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, a membership organization that represents clinics funded by Title X.
“This administration should acknowledge that Title X and its provider network have a proven public health track record and revert the program’s grant awards to their traditional three-year cycles.”
“Even as HHS announces these important grants for health care, it is rushing to finalize a domestic gag rule that would take that care away,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
“By pushing the gag rule, HHS is trying to undermine a program that four million people depend on for essential reproductive health care.”
That claim to a strong track record is not accurate. As it relates to another Planned Parenthood funding stream, as one professor has noted, the abortion giant’s programs to cut teen pregnancies are not effective.
In 2017, the Office of Adolescent Health published two reports evaluating the results of the TPPP’s grants, analyzing grantees from 2010 to 2014. Of the 38 programs studied, only three reported long-term reductions in the incidence of unprotected sex, and only one program reported a long-term reduction in overall rates of teen sexual activity.
A 2018 analysis conducted by Mathematica evaluated grant recipients through 2016 and found little improvement. Only five of 40 programs showed evidence of reducing teen sexual activity, and four of 40 programs demonstrated success in lowering teen-pregnancy rates. The vast majority of the evaluations found no long-term difference in sexual activity, use of contraception, or pregnancy rates between students enrolling in these programs and students in control groups.
Once the new rules are implemented fully, the abortion company Planned Parenthood stands to lose $60 million dollars that it receives via Title X Family Planning dollars.
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The move for the new rules came after President Trump yanked taxpayer from from International Planned Parenthood during his first week in office.
The proposed rule contains three important parts. The first prohibits recipients of taxpayer funds under Title X from referring women for abortions. The second requires companies that receive Family Planning funds to maintain separate facilities that do abortions as opposed to having their abortion businesses in the same facility as the Family Planning business. Because that is something Planned Parenthood refuses to do, it will no longer be eligible for taxpayer funding under President Trump’s proposed rule.
The final section of the rule requires recipients of the Title 10 Family Planning dollars to ensure that they follow all state and local laws requiring reporting of child abuse. Interestingly, the Planned Parenthood abortion company has repeatedly run afoul of such laws by refusing to report cases of child abuse or rape to law enforcement officials after killing the babies of young teenage girls in abortions.
The preamble of the proposed rule explains that the statutory authority for the Title X program “contains the following prohibition, which has not been altered since it was enacted in 1970: ‘None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.’” The preamble then goes on to state that the Department interprets this section “to establish a broad prohibition on funding, directly or indirectly, activities related to abortion as a method of family planning…The Department has determined that the existing regulations do not ensure compliance with the prohibition” in the original statute.
The three new key sections are as follows:
Section 59.14, Prohibits Title X projects from referring for abortion
“A Title X project may not perform, promote, refer for, or support, abortion as a method of family planning, nor take any other affirmative action to assist a patient to secure such an abortion. If asked, a medical provider may [emphasis added] provide a list of licensed, qualified, comprehensive health service providers (some, but not all of which also provide abortion, in addition to comprehensive prenatal care), but only if a woman who is currently pregnant clearly states that she has already decided to have an abortion.”
Section 59.15, Requires Title X entities to maintain physical and financial separation
“A Title X project must be organized so that it is physically and financially separate …. from activities which are prohibited…”[abortion]. The proposed rule outlines factors for the Secretary to take into consideration to determine whether objective integrity and independence exists, including; “the existence of separate and accurate accounting records,” “the degree of separation from facilities,” and “the existence of separate personnel.”
Section 59.17, Compliance with abuse reporting requirements
“Title X projects shall comply with all State and local laws requiring notification or reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abused, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, or human trafficking (collectively ‘State notification laws’).”In order to receive funds, projects must provide documentation in a number of areas, including a plan to comply with State laws, annual training of all individuals serving clients on behalf of the Title X project, and protocols to counsel minors on how to resist coercion, etc.
“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,” a Trump administration official said. “Any grantees that perform, support, or refer for abortion have a choice – disentangle themselves from abortion or fund their activities with privately raised funds.”
Of course, Planned Parenthood is unwilling to do so. Abortion is its primary focus, and it already is threatening a lawsuit to stop the defunding. However, the proposal is modeled after similar Reagan administration rules that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Rust v. Sullivan in 1991.
In addition, in 2017, the Trump administration cut millions of dollars in grants to Planned Parenthood through the failed Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. HHS spokesman Mark Vafiades told the New York Times last year that there is very little evidence that the program was successful.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in America, aborting approximately 320,000 unborn babies every year. Its most recent annual report showed a record income of $1.46 billion, with about half a billion dollars coming from taxpayers.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice said it is investigating whether the abortion chain illegally sold aborted baby body parts.
