Trump Family-Planning Abortion Rule Risks National Health Crisis: AMA
COUNTERPRODUCTIVE
The American Medical Association has filed a federal lawsuit challenging new Trump administration rules that would change family-planning grant money. Backed by anti-abortion activists, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the change last week. It would prohibit family-planning clinics funded by the Title X program from making abortion referrals—critics have called it a “gag rule.” It would also bar those using Title X grants from sharing office space with abortion providers. The result of the rule, if implemented, “will be a national public-health crisis in short order,” the joint AMA and Planned Parenthood lawsuit said. “Pregnancies that are unintended, and thus riskier, will increase. The number of abortions will also increase. And there will be fewer tests for sexually transmitted infections and cancer screens—putting patients and their partners at great health risk,” it went on. Planned Parenthood says it will leave the Title X program if the rule is brought in, forgoing an estimated $60 million in annual funding to make family-planning services available to low-income individuals for free or at low cost.