President Donald Trump’s administration whittled down Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding by about $44 million a year on Friday through Title X grants.
Some of that grant money now will go to a life-affirming medical provider called the Obria Group instead, Townhall reports.
The grant announcement was released Friday on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. Among those no longer receiving grants are Planned Parenthood affiliates in five states: Hawaii, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia, according to the abortion group’s website.
… seven Planned Parenthood affiliates in eight states are still set to receive funding through 2022 beginning on Monday. Oregon and Washington state’s health departments will also continue to serve as the sole grantees in those states. Those states and Planned Parenthood are suing to block the new anti-abortion rules due to take effect May 3, and threatening to withdraw unless federal courts step in.
Planned Parenthood’s $16 million-a-year allotment is a steep drop from the $50 to 60 million the group had been receiving annually.
The change amounts to about a $44 million cut in taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood annually.
Meanwhile, the pro-life Obria Group will receive $1.7 million a year in Title X grants to provide comprehensive family planning services to low-income individuals in California. Its services include pregnancy testing and counseling, prenatal care, HIV/AIDS testing, ultrasounds, cancer testing, well-woman care, pap smears, STD testing and treatment, adoption referral and post-abortion support, according to Townhall.
“Many women want the opportunity to visit a professional, comprehensive health care facility–not an abortion clinic — for their health care needs; this grant will give them that choice,” Kathleen Eaton Bravo, founder and CEO of the pro-life health care group, said in a statement.
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The money will go to seven clinic partners in four counties in California, according to the report. Three of the affiliates do not provide contraception, and two others will provide contraception but not use the grant money for that service, the report states.
Obria runs 21 health clinics and 11 mobile clinics in five states, and does not perform or promote abortions.
“With this grant, the administration has opened up a new avenue of health care choices for low-income and underserved women and their families in California,” Bravo said.
“Our goal is to basically say we’re going to build a model of comprehensive, holistic medical clinics so that a woman [facing an unplanned pregnancy] never has to darken the door of a Planned Parenthood again,” Bravo told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.
“We are her health care provider,” she said. “It is a brand that has been desperately needed for 45 years, to unite the [pro-life] movement under this medical model.”
Title X grants fund family planning services for low-income individuals. In February, the Trump administration finalized a new rule that prohibits Title X recipients from providing or promoting abortions.
The new “Protect Life” rule prohibits Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses from receiving any of those tax dollars unless they completely separate their abortion businesses from their taxpayer-funded services. That mean housing their family planning services in separate buildings with separate staff from their abortion businesses and a denial of funds if they fail to do so. Most Planned Parenthood entities are not expected to comply.
Several Planned Parenthood affiliates and pro-abortion politicians are challenging the rule in a series of lawsuits. Their success is uncertain. Similar Title X regulations were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991 in Rust v. Sullivan.
Planned Parenthood used to see about 1.5 million patients a year through Title X, but its services through the program, including cancer screenings, birth control, etc., have been dropping steadily for years, according to its own annual reports. Meanwhile, its abortion numbers have been growing – a clear indication of its true focus.
The Trump administration also cut $100 million from Planned Parenthood’s international arm in 2017.
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).