Trump gag rule drives Planned Parenthood out of federal family planning program

Planned Parenthood is pulling out of the federal Title X family planning program, thanks to the Trump administration’s domestic gag rule. The new regulation bars healthcare providers from talking to patients about abortion and requires harsher divides between a provider’s federally funded services and its already separately funded abortion services.

Planned Parenthood provides care to more than 40% of the 4 million low-income people who get family planning help through Title X, so the decision to pull out—a decision the organization made after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Trump administration to go forward with the gag rule—means that either 1.5 million people will lose their medical care or Planned Parenthood will have a massive funding gap to make up. That medical care includes routine check-ups, contraception, cancer screenings, and testing for sexually transmitted infections. In other words, the Trump administration has delivered the right-wing holy grail of defunding Planned Parenthood, and lower-income Americans will suffer.

Several Democratic governors and state legislatures have also said that their states would pull out of the Title X program as a result of the Trump gag rule.