The president on Friday is set to propose a new “gag rule” for health care organizations like Planned Parenthood. The return to Reagan-era abortion regulations will cut federal funding to any organization that “promotes abortion or refers patients to a caregiver that will provide one,” The New York Times reports.
Currently, federal funding for abortions is banned in most cases. But anti-abortion advocates have long made it their priority to cut funding from any health care facility that performs or even refers patients for abortions. Under the new proposal they would get their wish, with strict regulations imposed on Title X, the only federal program funding family planning services in America, providing approximately $286 million a year to low-income people.
Planned Parenthood, which receives $50 million to $60 million annually from Title X, risks losing its funding if its employees discuss, perform, or advise on abortions.
Cecile Richards, who recently stepped down as head of Planned Parenthood, told NPR, “This is absolutely extraordinary that we would now be gagging doctors and health care providers from giving women their legal information and even referring them for potentially live-saving health care.”
The policy is based on Ronald Reagan’s 1988 regulation that made it compulsory for abortion services to employ separate staff and have physical separation from their family planning services. Both Trump and Reagan switched between pro-choice and pro-life stances, but found their feet firmly in favor of their evangelical and socially conservative supporters. In January, Trump even became the first president to join anti-abortion activists at the March for Life, which he claimed was a “movement born out of love.”