HFF Asks HHS to Revise Title X Family Planning Rules

More than 85 national and state pro-life groups, including Hawaii Family Forum, are asking the Trump administration’s Department of Health & Human Services to take action on a top pro-life policy priority after Congress failed to stop taxpayer funding of abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood. The coalition today sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar asking him to revise Title X family planning rules.

The letter states:
“For far too long the Title X Family Planning Program has been integrated with abortion centers. It is time to act swiftly to disentangle abortion centers from the Title X network. Doing so would be consistent with the President’s pledge and subsequent actions to defund Planned Parenthood and reallocate funding to alternative providers.”

A Marist poll from January 2018 found that six in ten Americans oppose the use of taxpayer funding for abortion.

Planned Parenthood has inflated the U.S. abortion rate and more than three million avoidable abortions can be attributed to Planned Parenthood’s intervention in the abortion market, according to a new study by Charlotte Lozier Institute researchers, published online in the peer-reviewed Open Journal of Preventive Medicine.

There are nearly 4,000 Title X service sites nationwide, less than 500 of which are Planned Parenthood facilities. The Reagan-era regulations would not decrease funding for Title X by a single penny. Funds would instead be directed to service sites willing to comply.

Under President Reagan, Title X regulations specifically directed taxpayer funding to Title X family planning locations that do not perform or refer for abortions. The Reagan regulations were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1991 in Rust v. Sullivan.

Read full letter Azar Groups Letter on Title X.