Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon’s attorney general, is preparing to sue the Trump administration over a new rule that essentially prevents those who work in family planning clinics around the state from discussing abortion with their clients. She’s right to take up the fight.
The administration issued new rules Feb. 22 that bar clinics receiving Title X funds from referring women elsewhere for abortions and eliminates a requirement that abortion counseling be offered. The fund pays for family planning services, including contraceptives, and it already was illegal to use them to finance abortion services.
Barring clinic staff from even discussing abortion goes a giant step farther than the existing ban, however, and it should be overturned. It prevents medical staff from discussing a legal medical procedure with the women they serve. In addition, those clinics that have provided abortions, even if not paid for with Title X funds, must now either end those services or house them completely separately from their other family planning services.
In Oregon, according to the National Planning and Reproductive Health Association, Title X-financed services were provided to nearly 45,000 women in 2017.
No Oregonian should have to go to a health care provider and be told that some legal option for care cannot be discussed, yet that’s exactly what the new Title X rules require. Rosenblum will join a number of her counterparts from other states in suing the administration. This time, they’re right on target.
The Bulletin, Feb. 28
