The Obama administration is attempting a “Hail Mary” stunt to ensure Planned Parenthood abortionists get huge amounts of federal funding in the future, even though states have better plans to address women’s health.
“The proposed rule is a parting gift from the Obama administration to Planned Parenthood, at the expense of women’s health,” said Senior Counsel Steven H. Aden of the Alliance Defending Freedom.
“Even though many more publicly funded healthcare centers exist than Planned Parenthood facilities and similar abortion-driven businesses, this rule denies states their right to prioritize funding for more comprehensive, preventive health care clinics on the false assumption that Planned Parenthood is superior simply because it focuses on dispensing birth control,” he said.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services is working on a new rule that would impact how states allocate federal health-care funds.
The new rule would ban state and local public health officials, who get most of the Title X grant money from the federal government, from sending the bulk of the money for family planning programs to public health agencies, such as federally qualified health centers and rural health centers.
To receive funds, they would have to show they can dispense birth control better than Planned Parenthood.
That’s because the Obama administration wants the federal money to go to Planned Parenthood’s abortionists.
ADF, along with the Susan B. Anthony List and the Charlotte Lozier Institute, now have submitted comments to the government on the proposed rule, explaining the states simply are trying to make the best use of federal funding.
The comments state: “The proposed rule responds to HHS’s perception that ‘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 the services required under Title X.’
“HHS contends this has led to disruption or reduction of services. ‘In several instances,’ HHS claims, ‘these restrictions have interfered with the ‘capacity to make rapid and effective’ use of [federal funds].'”
The programs set up by states use a “tiered approach” in which “public and primary/prevention care providers are preferred in the distribution of Title X funds.”
But the Obama administration is infuriated that the programs exclude “providers” who specialize in abortion.
But the states’ prioritization systems “have been approved by federal courts for decades,” the groups explain.
The administration’s plan is to use administrative rules to do what courts have refused to do – restrict the prioritization systems.
“HHS’s proposed rule ‘rigs the game’ against states that desire to utlize Title X funding to increase primary and preventive health care for women by claiming that such policies ‘limit access to high quality family planning services by restricting specific types of providers from participating,'” the groups explain.
“HHS’s proposed rule trammels upon an area traditionally left to the states – state health care policy – and truncates the important task states play in creating innovative and effective new structures for delivery of healthcare services.”
“This sudden and deficient rulemaking will needlessly disrupt the primary care women currently receive through the ‘whole woman’ approach of many states,” explained Charlotte Lozier Institute President Chuck Donovan. “Ironically, it will also interfere with the continuity and quality of advice they now receive regarding family planning. The rule assists a handful of vendors the administration prefers at the expense of tens of thousands of patients.”
“We urge HHS to reject the proposed rule,” the pro-life groups wrote in their comments to HHS, “as it contradicts the letter and spirit of Title X not to subsidize elective abortion, and runs contrary to the right of states in our federal system to optimize health care for women by prioritizing public funding to providers who offer primary and preventive care as well as contraception.”
The bottom line is that the rule change would “have the unintended effect of encouraging states to withdraw from the Title X program. Recently, Texas decided that state funds would be expended for its Medicaid family planning waiver program after losing federal funding as a result of deeming providers of abortion and abortion referral non-qualified for family planning funds,” the groups said.
Their letter was addressed to Susan B. Moskosky of the DHHS “Office of Population Affairs.”
“Prioritization of public family planning funding to public health departments and clinics, and non-public hospitals and community health centers such as Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics is simply better healthcare policy,” they argue.
“Unlike boutique ‘reproductive healthcare providers’ such as Planned Parenthood affiliates, such primary and preventive care centers provide low-income families with access to not only family planning services, but also vital preventive services, including prenatal and perinatal services, well-child services, immunizations against vaccine-preventable diseases, primary care services, diagnostic laboratory and radiological services, emergency medical services, and pharmaceutical services.”
Not only have federal courts “held that prioritization statutes do not impermissible condition government benefits on the forfeiture of constitutional rights,” the U.S. Supreme Court “has observed that state governments have ‘a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life,'” they argue.
And, the court said while abortion is legal, that “does not carry with it a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices.”
