Last month the first physician to run Planned Parenthood in nearly a half-century was forced out because she actually wanted to focus on women’s health. Her firing proved what many Americans already knew: that Planned Parenthood exists primarily to promote abortion rather than women’s health.
Taxpayers should not be required to fund this pro-abortion organization, and in a remarkable series of rulings even the Ninth Circuit agreed, for now. With seven new Trump judges on that court, the Ninth Circuit is no longer the liberal playground where Planned Parenthood has been able to snap its fingers and get everything it wanted.
Apparently Planned Parenthood did not see the memo about these changes. They sued in that jurisdiction to block new rules by the Trump Administration which limit the use of taxpayer dollars by abortion advocacy groups.
These new rules improve upon restrictions installed during the Reagan Administration, but which Clinton repealed and George W. Bush failed to reinstate. From the inception of the family planning program known as Title X, the federal government has been prohibited from spending money to promote abortion as a method of family planning, but that limit has mostly been ignored.
Trump’s fabulous new rules reinstate the original goals of Title X, by banning use of its money to refer for abortions. These rules require separating any affiliated abortion clinics, ending the standard requirement of abortion counseling, and restricting which employees can promote abortions while receiving federal dollars.
Planned Parenthood wants to continue to receive the $60 million in handouts from the federal government under Title X, but without complying with the new rules. Imagine how far that amount would stretch if it were spent on lifesaving medical care for the poor, rather than on abortion advocacy.
Before Trump began appointing judges, Planned Parenthood could have quickly persuaded a federal court to block the new rules. Even now, Planned Parenthood won as it always has at the district court level. The appeal to the Ninth Circuit, however, resulted in a statistically unlikely assignment of three Republican-appointed judges for a panel. They unanimously blocked the district court decision, allowing the Trump Administration rules to go into effect.
