Teen Vogue: Trump Admin's Title X Rule 'Unlawful'

Teen Vogue– once a magazine that mostly featured makeup tricks and fashion tips – is now stirring up concerns that its young readers will have no access to contraception, courtesy of the Trump administration’s Title X rule.

The magazine that, in 2017, made headlines for publishing a “tutorial” for its teens on how to have anal sex, posted a piece Monday packed with sympathy for abortion provider Planned Parenthood after its decision to withdraw from the Title X federal family planning grant program.

Referring to the enactment of the Protect Life Rule this week as “a political flashpoint for birth control access,” Teen Vogue interviewed Jessica Marcella, president of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), who called the rule “unlawful” and “the largest attack on contraception in a generation.”

“People have been desensitized, calling this political, because for decades there have been fights related specifically to abortion, and whether or not there should be federal funds used for abortion,” she said, “and what is happening is this administration is capitalizing on that desensitization to attack contraception as well. The conflation of abortion, family planning, and contraception is complete.”

Teen Vogue, as MRC NewsBusters reported, is taking its turn among left-wing media to portray Planned Parenthood as a victim of the Trump administration’s Protect Life Rule – which emphasizes that abortion is not family planning or health care.

The rule prohibits the use of the funds to “perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”

As John McCormack explained at National Review Monday, the Protect Life Rule is not a new idea cooked up by the Trump administration.

Rather, the administration “is merely enforcing the plain meaning of the 1970 law that established Title X,” he said.

“That law states: ‘None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,’” he wrote.

Planned Parenthood, which profits handsomely from abortion, opted to withdraw from the federal Title X family planning program this week rather than comply with the rule.

What young girls will not learn from Teen Vogue is that no Title X family planning funding is being cut at all from the grant program. Instead, the funds left behind by providers such as Planned Parenthood will be distributed to federally qualified health centers that offer more comprehensive health care services and which outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics, 20 to 1.

Any individual who would have chosen a Title X abortion facility for regular health care and family planning services can find another center at getyourcare.org.

The abortion industry giant’s own annual reports show, while Planned Parenthood continues to receive over $500 million annually in taxpayer funds through the Medicaid program, many of its non-abortion services have been in decline over the years as the number of abortions performed in its clinics has risen.

In year 2017-2018, Planned Parenthood performed 11,373 more abortions than in the previous year, and collected $1.67 billion in revenue, including $630.8 million from “private contributions and bequests,” a figure that is $98 million more than the $532.7 million it received from private sources in the previous year.

With all its revenue, Planned Parenthood reported it made nearly $250 million in profits, or, what it refers to as “excess revenue.”

In a report released in 2017, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the research arm of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, confirmed Planned Parenthood obtains 35 percent of the U.S. abortion market – a figure that well overtakes the market shares of leaders in other industries.

“The level of market dominance for abortions demonstrated by Planned Parenthood could be taught in business schools as the ultimate example of strategic planning and execution,” wrote CLI President Chuck Donovan and Vice President Dr. James Studnicki. “It is a defining activity.”

The report also observed that Planned Parenthood provided less than 1.4 percent of the nation’s HIV tests and less than 1 percent of pap tests, and that, in the previous five years, service-to-client ratios for breast exams and pap tests had declined by 37 percent.

Marcella told Teen Vogue that Planned Parenthood’s decision to withdraw from Title X rather than give up referring for abortions will be “potentially irreparable in the sense that when you breed mistrust within a community towards a health center, then people stop getting the care that they need.”

However, Mia Heck, spokeswoman for the Trump Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to Planned Parenthood’s objections to the Protect Life Rule by pointing out the organization is choosing abortion over patients who need healthcare and family planning services.

“To the extent that Planned Parenthood claims that it must make burdensome changes to comply with the Final Rule,” she said, “it is actually choosing to place a higher priority on the ability to refer for abortion instead of continuing to receive federal funds to provide a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services to clients in need of these services.”