The Trump Administration announced is immediately enacting its Protect Life Rule that bars facilities that receive federal family planning funds from performing or referring women for abortions.
Last week, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with its rule even as it continues to be challenged in the courts.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the Protect Life Rule in February, potentially blocking about $60 million in family planning funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers who refer girls and women for abortions.
The new regulation, which governs Title X, the federal grant program that provides funding for family planning services, prohibits the use of the funds to “perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”
As a result of the rule, to continue to receive Title X funds, Planned Parenthood and other facilities that perform or refer for abortions would have to either end their abortion services from all locations that receive the funding, or move those services offsite to an entirely different location.
HHS notified clinics that it will first begin enforcing the ban on abortion referrals, reported Fox News, with the physical separation of abortion facilities from family planning clinics scheduled to take effect next year.
Though Planned Parenthood and its allies in the abortion industry are treating the Protect Life Rule as a new regulation, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News @ Night the Trump administration is simply enforcing a law that is already in existence.
“For too long that money has been used to subsidize the provision of abortion contrary to statute,” he said. “Congress has said that you cannot support abortion as a method of family planning. We’re just finally enforcing it.”
Troy Newman, president of pro-life watchdog group Operation Rescue, said in a statement that the Trump administration is acting in agreement with its own pro-life ethic that values human life “from conception to natural death.”
“Laws and regulations that protect innocent life are of little value if the judiciary is biased in favor of the manufactured ‘right’ to abortion that does not exist in the U.S. Constitution,” Newman explained. “President Trump has the foresight to understand that and has acted to ensure that those protections are not subverted by liberal activist courts, and we applaud him for that.”