Big Win for Trump-Reagan Team

President Donald Trump got a big win yesterday from an unlikely source, the notoriously Liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In an unanimous decision the court upheld his administration’s family planning rules. Those rules “prohibit the use of Title X funds to perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.” The court had no real choice since similar Reagan era policies had already been tested and upheld in the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan (1991).

The opinion goes into effect immediately and effects approximately 4,000 clinics operating in the US receiving Title X funding. The court gave the clinics time to separate the abortion part of their business from the rest of their operations. They have 120 days to financially separate the two and a full year to separate them into distinct physical locations.

Planned Parenthood is the Biggest Loser

President Trump campaigned nonstop on ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood (PP). He’s taken five steps, so far, to fulfill that promise. This ruling is significant as it will reduce federal funding for PP almost $60 million. That’s a fraction of PP’s massive $1.3 billion budget but it’s over 10% of the $528 million taxpayer dollars PP receives annually from US taxpayers (primarily Medicaid).

PP and the pro-choice crowd portray PP as a benevolent health-care provider. The numbers, however, tell a different story. PP operates just under 500 clinics in the US and is the largest abortion business in the country. They performed over 320,000 abortions in 2018, well over one-third of all US abortions. PP is very active politically giving tens of millions of dollars to support Democrat campaigns and progressive Liberal issues.

PP and AMA Cry Foul

Many pro-choice healthcare providers, as well as the American Medical Association (AMA), claim the limits placed on them by this decision suppresses a full “family planning” conversation. Those providers demonize this restriction by referring to it as the “Title X gag rule.”

PP President Leana Wen’s reacted in a PBS interview: “It prohibits doctors and nurses from telling our patients full and accurate medical information. It compromises the oath that I took when I became a doctor. You can’t be telling patients, well, I can’t give you referrals, go look at the Internet yourself.” In a rare candid moment she later added, “protecting and expanding access to abortion” is the group’s “core mission.”

MAGA Country Cheers

A Marist poll shows President Trump’s policy is on solid ground. A commanding 76% believe that legal abortion should be “limited to the first trimester, permitted only in very rare circumstances (rape, incest or to save the mother’s life), or barred entirely.” In that same poll and by a 30-point margin (63/33), US voters favor a “ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, when an unborn child has reached her sixth month in the womb.”

Pro-life groups are aligned with the Marist Poll and the Trump policy: “We thank President Trump for the numerous actions his administration has taken to restore pro-life policies,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “We are encouraged to see the announcement of Title X regulations that are back in line with previous policy that prevents federal dollars from being used to directly or indirectly promote abortion domestically.”

Keeping campaign promises is not unusual for this president. The editors at National Review sidestepped the kept promise entirely but spoke loudly for pro-life advocates. When Trump’s rules were first announced they wrote, “The new rule not only denies funding to groups that profit from killing innocent human beings, but in the process exposes Planned Parenthood’s real agenda.”