President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services just issued a rule that bars states from defunding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. The final version of the rule, which was released Wednesday, stipulates that states cannot block federal Title X funds from contraception providers that also perform abortions.
In the past several years, a number of states have taken actions to restrict participation by certain types of providers as subrecipients in the Title X Program, unrelated to the provider’s ability to provide family planning services. This has caused limitations in the geographic distribution of services and decreased access to services.
The final rule clarifies the Title X program regulations by adding that no grant recipient making subawards for the provision of services as part of its Title X project may prohibit an entity from participating for reasons other than its ability to provide Title X services.
Federal law stipulates that tax dollars cannot fund abortions, yet a growing number of states and lawmakers are concerned that federal funds going to contraception clinics that also provide abortions is enabling the provision of abortion. Funds are fungible, which means that once an entity gets its hands on taxpayer dollars, the government no longer has control over how exactly that money is spent.
Yet Obama wants to make it so states can’t take it upon themselves to ensure tax dollars aren’t funding abortions. He’s giving pro-lifers, and unborn babies, the middle finger on his way out the door thanks to his radical pro-abortion ideology.
Obama has repeatedly turned a blind eye to Planned Parenthood’s alleged misdeeds. Last year, when an undercover journalist exposed the nation’s largest abortion provider has been involved in a massive organ trafficking scheme, the president’s Department of Justice decided to go after the group that produced the videos. In them, Planned Parenthood employees admit they were selling organs harvested from the bodies of aborted babies.
Because HHS and Title X are under executive control, President-elect Donald Trump could undo this eleventh-hour rule change once he is sworn into office.
“The Obama Administration will not have the last word,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said in a statement Wednesday. “With this new year comes renewed opportunity to fight for the dignity of every unborn child, the wellbeing of every struggling mother, and the conscience rights of every American taxpayer.”
