The Supreme Court has agreed to take Planned Parenthood’s case challenging President Donald Trump’s pro-life rule on Title X that cut $60 million of the taxpayer funding the abortion business receives.
Ironically, on this day in 2019, President Trump 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. The action added to President Trump’s record of defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion company.
The abortion chain received about $50 million to $60 million in Title X funds annually, but it lost the federal funds when it declined to comply with the pro-life rule.
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 pro-life rule prohibited 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 did not comply and lost funding.
Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit challenging the rule and, today, the Supreme Court announced it would hold a hearing on it. Joe Bdien is expected to overturn the rule but a Supreme Court decision in favor of it could set a helpful precedent for the future, with a new pro-life president putting the rule in place.
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Lower courts have split on the Trump administration’s regulation, so the Supreme Court consolidated three cases into one and will consider them together. In August 2019, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the rule to go into effect despite the ongoing challenge against it. But in 2020, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s block on the rule, resulting in conflicting rulings.
SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser told LifeNews previously that pro-life groups support the protect Life Rule.
She told LifeNews: “The Protect Life Rule does not cut family planning funding by a single dime, and instead directs tax dollars to entities that provide healthcare to women but do not perform abortions. The Title X program was not intended to be a slush fund for abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, which violently ends the lives of more than 332,000 unborn babies a year and receives almost $60 million a year in Title X taxpayer dollars. We thank President Trump and Secretary Azar for ensuring that the Title X program is truly about funding family planning, not abortion.”
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.”
Brad Mattes, the president of Life Issues Institute, also told LifeNews he was excited to hear the news that the Protect Life Rule has been finalized.
“President Trump just finalized his Protect Life Rule which prohibits Title X taxpayer funding from going to ANY entity that performs abortions,” he said. “That means if abortion giant Planned Parenthood refuses to comply with the Protect Life Rule it will LOSE $60 MILLION of our tax dollars each year!”
He profusely thanked the president for his actions.
“I’m so thankful for your activism, without which we would not be celebrating this great victory today,” he said. “Planned Parenthood is America’s LARGEST abortion business. Congress was unable to defund Planned Parenthood because of Democratic filibusters in the Senate. But President Trump has used his executive powers to act decisively and cut off this stream of funding to abortion businesses that had been accessing these Title X funds.”
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).
