Abortion providers adjust to new federal funding rules

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers said this week they will go without federal family planning money after the Trump administration began enforcement of new pro-life rules on Monday. Jacqueline Ayers, Planned Parenthood’s vice president of government relations and public policy, said the nation’s largest abortion provider would continue to fight the rules in court, and emergency funds would replace federal funding in the meantime.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally notified abortion facilities Tuesday that new regulations would take effect. The rules, which have survived multiple judicial challenges, bar Title X funding recipients from providing abortions or abortion referrals and require medical clinics and abortion facilities to have separate finances and physical space.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said Thursday he was pulling his state out of Title X’s family planning program and would instead fund abortion facilities with state money. Illinois Republican lawmakers responded by decrying Pritzker’s “unrivaled zeal for forced taxpayer funding of abortions.” Maine Family Planning, a major abortion provider, also dropped out of Title X on Tuesday and said it would return any federal money it had previously received from the program.