Rather than comply with a new Trump administration rule that prohibits referrals to doctors who can perform abortions, Planned Parenthood announced Monday its decision to withdraw from federal Title X funding, the family planning program that provides reproductive health services to poor women.
Planned Parenthood called the unprecedented and impossible decision “absolutely devastating.”
“The Trump administration has forced Planned Parenthood grantees out of Title X,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s acting president. “The impact of the Trump administration’s gag rule will reverberate across the country.”
The following is a statement on Planned Parenthood’s impending withdrawal from Title X from Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation:
“Today is a giant step backwards for reproductive justice, human rights, and the American medical community. The Trump-Pence domestic ‘gag rule’ prevents people who experience pregnancy from receiving full and accurate health information from their doctors, endangering patients and cutting off access to lifesaving care. It is an outrage that Planned Parenthood has been forced to choose between receiving Title X funding that helps low-income patients receive care or providing vital services to those seeking medically accurate guidance about abortion services, STI testing, and cancer screenings.
Leading medical organizations representing millions of health care providers have spoken out in opposition to this administration’s decision to regulate conversations between doctors and their patients.
Years of progress on family planning is being swept away by this administration’s callous attempts to restrict access to comprehensive family planning services through its misguided efforts to promote so-called natural family planning and discredited abstinence methods among young people. Feminist Majority Foundation and Feminist Majority are proud to stand with Planned Parenthood in the face of these repeated attacks by the Trump administration on reproductive rights and justice for all people.”
