WASHINGTON -- Clinics that provide abortions or even discuss the procedure with their patients would lose federal funding under a new Health and Human Services Department rule that takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood, according to two White House officials and other people briefed on the matter.
The rule, which is to be announced today, is a top priority of social conservatives and is the latest move by President Donald Trump to impose curbs on abortion rights, in this case by withholding money from any facility that even raises the possibility of an abortion with patients.
The policy would be a return to one instituted in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan that required abortion services to have a "physical separation" and "separate personnel" from other family planning activities. It is often described as a domestic gag rule because it would also bar caregivers at facilities that receive family planning funds from providing any information to patients about abortion or where to receive one.
Federal family planning laws already bar direct funding of organizations that use abortion as a family planning method. But conservative activists and Republican lawmakers have been pressing Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services secretary, to further tighten the rules so that abortions could not occur -- or be performed by the same staff -- at locations that receive Title X federal family planning money.
Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the new proposal "outrageous" and "dangerous" in a statement late Thursday.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights, thanked Trump for the move in a statement Thursday night.
A Section on 05/18/2018