Planned Parenthood’s decision to walk away from about $60 million in annual Title X federal funding for low-income women’s reproductive health care is a case study in how extreme the politics of abortion have become.
The nearly 50-year-old Title X program has been called the unsung hero of American public health, but on Monday Planned Parenthood, which serves about 40 percent of Title X patients in America, felt compelled to turn down the money rather than submit to cruel new rules.
Already, Planned Parenthood had to keep those funds separate from its work to help women obtain abortions. But the Trump administration’s new family planning rule requires any facility that uses the Title X funding in any way to essentially pretend abortion or any referral to it is not legal.
The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports reproductive rights, found that Title X clinics helped prevent more than 822,000 unintended pregnancies in 2015. The institute estimates that for every dollar the federal government spends on family planning, it saves more than $7. In 2017, Title X clinics served more than four million women, 42 percent of them uninsured.
Clearly the sides are set: The Trump administration is openly dedicated to knee-capping health care providers that perform abortions, and Planned Parenthood was its biggest target. Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, would rather take a huge financial hit and wage a high-profile fight with the Trump administration than change its practices.