Lawmakers seek restored 'Protect Life Rule,' which partially defunded abortion businesses

A coalition of lawmakers recently issued a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., urging the Trump administration to restore the "Protect Life Rule," which prohibits Title X funding for abortion providers.

Key Takeaways:

• A coalition of 159 lawmakers has sent a letter to the Trump administration, urging the restoration of the Protect Life Rule, which was in place under the first Trump administration.

• A similar letter requesting the reinstatement of the Protect Life Rule was sent to Kennedy and Trump in March by 10 U.S. senators.

• Under the rule, abortion businesses were required to separate their family planning services from their abortion business in order to receive Title X federal funding.

• The rule, repealed during the Biden administration, has inexplicably not been restored during the current Trump administration.

The Backstory:

The "Protect Life Rule" was put into place during the first Trump administration in 2019. Under the rule, organizations receiving Title X funding for family planning services were required to separate those services, both financially and physically, from their abortion business. They were also prohibited from referring for abortions. When this rule was instituted, Planned Parenthood chose to reject the requirements, walking away from millions in federal funding to continue its abortion focus.

When President Biden took office, he disbanded the rule. Since regaining control of the White House, the Trump administration has not reinstated the rule; though abortion businesses were temporarily disqualified from receiving Title X funding, that funding was eventually restored.

As Live Action News reported at that time:

A 2015 report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates receive approximately $60 million annually through the Title X program.

The Details:

A similar letter requesting the reinstatement of the Protect Life Rule was sent to Kennedy and Trump in March by 10 U.S. senators. The most recent letter, spearheaded by U.S. Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and U.S. Representatives Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) and Michael Guest (R-Miss.), was signed by 159 lawmakers across both the House and the Senate. It urges Kennedy and the Trump administration to restore the rule and ensure that abortion businesses unwilling to separate their abortion business from the rest of their services no longer receive Title X funding.

The letter points out the problem of fungibility of funding, which serves as a support for abortion-related business without this rule in place:

During President Trump's first administration, the Protect Life Rule successfully fulfilled the spirit and letter of this decades-old law by firmly separating abortion from family planning. The rule appropriately eliminated the egregious abortion referral mandate, which protected the conscience rights of health care providers and increased the potential for diversity among program applicants. Furthermore, it stipulated that Title X projects had to be organized with complete physical and financial separation between a grantee's Title X activities and abortion activities.

This much-needed reform ended the practice of "co-location," which had made federal funds vulnerable to misuse and implied that abortion was a method of family planning. The Protect Life Rule also implemented a stronger focus on protecting women and children from being victimized by abuse, rape, incest, and trafficking by bolstering oversight of grantee compliance with state abuse reporting requirements.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration's decision to suspend and revise the Protect Life Rule compromised the integrity of the Title X program...

The letter also notes that without the rule in place, Title X is a "funding stream" for the abortion industry, with Title X funds making up over $170 million of Planned Parenthood's expenditures between 2013 and 2015.

The Bottom Line:

The lawmakers urged the administration to take swift action to prohibit any more Title X funds from funding abortion businesses, saying: "It is time to restore the bright line of separation between family planning and abortion that is consistent with the plain text of the statute and Congressional intent."