How House Dems Plan to Stop Trump’s Birth Control ‘Gag Rule’
Democratic leadership has found a way to block President Trump’s domestic “gag rule” on abortion: The House will only pay for a federal family planning program that doesn’t include it.
The Trump Administration released a rule in March that said no federal family planning funds can go to any group that provides or even refers patients to abortions. That includes Planned Parenthood, which uses Title X family planning funds to subsidize birth control and STI tests for low-income patients. (Federal funds are already prohibited from paying for abortions.)
The rule, which was supposed to take effect this week, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge after Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against it. And House Democrats, who mainly control the nation’s purse strings, included language in their annual Labor-HHS Appropriations Act on Monday that would permanently block the abortion gag rule by refusing to allocate funds toward implementing it.