https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/03/04/california-files-suit-block-trump-administrations-a******n-gag-rule-family-planning-program/?utm_term=.2a9fd0e3bb66&wpisrc=al_news__alert-hse--alert-national&wpmk=1California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) brought the first major lawsuit Monday to block changes to the Title X family planning program that would shift tens of millions of dollars from a******n providers such as Planned Parenthood toward faith-based pregnancy clinics.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeks a court injunction to stop the rule from taking effect. It’s the first of what is expected to be a flurry of challenges to the rule that would affect more than 4 million low-income women who get services ranging from cancer screenings to pregnancy tests to birth control through the Department of Health and Human Services program.
The rule imposes what administration officials have referred to as a “bright line” of physical and financial separation between the provision of family planning and a******n services, effectively requiring Planned Parenthood to drastically alter its operations, or else cease to receive an estimated $60 million in annual funding.
Opponents have called it a “gag” rule that compromises medical ethics and endangers the lives of patients because it explicitly bars doctors, nurses or other care personnel from referring a woman for an a******n.
California is just one of many parties – including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights – that have vowed to sue in recent days.
Supporters of the new rule, which include numerous religious and anti-a******n organizations, have pointed to how the Supreme Court upheld similar regulations in 1991′s Rust v. Sullivan in a 5-4 decision. But those regulations, introduced under President Reagan and tied up in legal challenges, took effect several weeks before the arrival of the Bill Clinton administration, which promptly eliminated them.
Becerra’s main argument hinges on a provision of the Affordable Care Act, which was not in place 28 years ago, that forbids regulations that create "unreasonable barriers to the ability of individuals to obtain appropriate medical care.”
California is home to the largest Title X provider network in the nation serving about 1 million women, and Becerra states that the new rule places its clinics “in an untenable situation.”
The nation’s Democratic attorneys general have repeatedly challenged initiatives of the Trump administration, weighing in on everything from his immigration policy to efforts to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border through an emergency declaration.
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