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Reproductive care providers in the Title X program can never provide abortions, but Trump’s gag rule prevented them from providing abortion referrals. Instead, they could provide only a list of other health care providers, some of which could provide abortions and others only prenatal care, without indicating which were which.
By driving providers away from Title X, though, the Trump administration compromised access to contraception and cancer screenings. And as we know, as logic dictates, and as years of evidence show, when people don’t have access to contraception, there are more unintended pregnancies—potentially hundreds of thousands more, including among teens. That means a combination of more abortions and more people forced to carry pregnancies they do not want.
The Biden administration’s new rule, rolling back the gag rule, will take effect on November 8. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Alexis McGill Johnson called the move “a major victory for patients, access to sexual and reproductive health care, and health equity.”
”Title X is a critical piece of our social safety net that can, and should, ensure that people with low incomes can access essential health care without forcing providers to withhold referrals for all of the options available to them,” she said in a statement. McGill Johnson did criticize the Biden administration for not going far enough—the new rule allows “objecting individuals and grantees” to opt out of providing counseling and abortion referrals.
The next Republican president can reinstate a gag rule, of course, but for now, the worst limits are lifted. It’s a small piece of good news for reproductive rights in the middle of all the terrible news coming out of the Supreme Court.
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