PD Editorial: Women’s health care loses in Planned Parenthood fight

President Donald Trump recently decided to ban federal Title X funding to clinics that provide abortions in addition to other family planning and health care services. Abortion opponents hailed the decision, but if those opponents truly care about reducing the number of abortions in America, they should reconsider, because it almost certainly would result in more unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

Trump is targeting Planned Parenthood, which he has been promising to defund since he started his campaign for president. Though Planned Parenthood has long been the primary bogeyman for abortion opponents, the organization does much more. Abortion services are just a small part of the important health care it offers.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest provider of family planning assistance and serves about 4 million Americans who receive health care through Title X.

Trump's proposed rule would require Planned Parenthood to have separate staffs and facilities for its abortion services and for its family planning services - adding enormous and unsustainable expense. This could result in the shut-down of many Planned Parenthood health clinics across the nation.

In many areas, Planned Parenthood is the only provider of health services for low-income women, including cancer screening, STD testing and birth control. Trump doesn't seem to understand what he'll be taking away in his zeal to attack this group and feed red meat to his base.

“This is one of the largest-scale and most dangerous attacks we've seen on women's rights and reproductive health care in this country. This policy is straight out of ‘The Handmaid's Tale' - yet, it's taking effect in America in 2018,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The rule would also gag doctors of Title X patients, prohibiting them from discussing abortion or making referrals unless specifically asked. This mirrors the global gag rule reinstated by Trump and is unnecessary and punitive.

It also will likely prove as counterproductive as the global gag rule. Studies have found that the so-called Mexico City policy led to spikes in abortion rates in 20 sub-Saharan African countries. Women were nearly three times more likely to get abortions in countries where the policy was in place than in countries where it wasn't. There's no reason to think that won't hold true here.

Both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have strongly objected to the changes as “out of date and out of touch.” They warned that the gag order is a federal intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship.

These changes weren't even necessary if the goal simply was to prevent tax dollars from paying for abortions. Federal law already prohibits federal funding of abortions.

In anticipation of such a move, the state Legislature passed a bill to give California Title X clinics grants that will help them operate while seeking alternative funding. That won't help in other states and isn't a permanent solution.

Trump's attempt to undermine women's health care is under intragency review and won't become official for a few months. That's time enough to let the White House know that providing health care and family planning services for poor women ought to be an absolute no-brainer.

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