‘Major blow to Planned Parenthood’: Appeals court lets Trump admin defund abortion providers as lawsuits continue

In what Politico refers to as “a major blow to Planned Parenthood,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has “granted the Trump administration’s request to lift national injunctions ordered by lower federal courts in Oregon and Washington state, as well as a statewide injunction in California” with regard to Title X “family planning” funding, while lawsuits filed by at least 20 states continue to work their way through the courts.

According to a previous report from Live Action News, the so-called “gag rule,” as the abortion industry has labeled it, would prevent “Title X funding recipients from referring patients for abortions,” and require “that abortion providers physically and financially separate their abortion facilities from their facilities providing birth control services — 120 days to comply financially, and one year to comply physically.” Planned Parenthood stands to lose $60 million in annual funding if the rule is ultimately upheld. Planned Parenthood’s family planning/birth control services have plummeted 33% over ten years, and its total cancer screenings have dropped by an incredible 68% over ten years. Its abortions, however, continue to increase by the thousands each year even though they somehow magically remain at just 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services.

Politico reports that the three appeals court judges, “all appointed by previous Republican presidents,” believe the Trump administration “will likely prevail in the legal battle over the Title X family planning program since the Supreme Court held up similar Reagan-era rules almost 30 years ago, though they were reversed by the Clinton administration before taking effect.”

READ: How Planned Parenthood uses taxpayer dollars and Title X for abortion

“Barring further court orders,” writes Politico, “the Trump administration can enforce a rule finalized this spring that strips federal Title X funding from any clinic that provides abortions or abortion referrals.”

The court wrote in a unanimous opinion, “Absent a stay, HHS will be forced to allow taxpayer dollars to be spent in a manner that it has concluded violates the law, as well as the Government’s important policy interest in ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not go to fund or subsidize abortions.” While opponents of the rule claim that the Department of Health and Human Services can point to no specific example of where any commingling of funds has occurred, the fact that Planned Parenthood’s facilities and physicians providing both family planning (birth control) and abortion services are housed in the same buildings means that taxpayer funds received by Planned Parenthood go to support the business of Planned Parenthood, which includes more than 320,000 abortions annually. This is a concept known as fungibility.

Taxpayer Funding of Abortion at Planned Parenthood

For abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood to claim that no “commingling” of funds or services can be proven is ridiculous, for this reason. And, as a director for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast admitted in an undercover Center for Medical Progress video, shuffling dollars and numbers around to make everything look legitimate and separate on paper is “all just a matter of line items.”

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