After a string of setbacks, opponents of abortion chalked up a significant victory in 2019 with the enactment of a federal regulation to prevent a major type of federal funding from reaching entities that provide abortion services.
At issue was Title X funding, a Department of Health and Human Services grant program that targets lower-income Americans who are facing unintended pregnancies or seeking family planning services.
The Trump administration enacted a rule that effectively said that any facility receiving federal Title X funding cannot also be an abortion provider. Previously, abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood could receive Title X funds as long as the funds were only used for non-abortion services.
"When this rule was instituted, Planned Parenthood was faced with having to choose between continuing to receive the Title X funding for family planning care or continuing to provide abortion services at some of their clinics," said Gretchen E. Ely, a professor at the State University of New York-Buffalo's School of Social Work.
In August 2019, one month before the rule was scheduled to take effect, Planned Parenthood decided to stop taking Title X rather than discontinuing abortion services. A federal appeals court upheld the rule's legality in February 2020.
Samuel Lau, director of federal advocacy communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the rule "has left many states without any direct grantees or with serious gaps in care in the program" after Planned Parenthood stopped taking funds.
On another front, the Trump administration made progress targeting the other major source of government funding for Planned Parenthood: Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health coverage for low-income Americans.
The administration has encouraged states to seek permission to bar Planned Parenthood from participating in their state Medicaid programs. In January 2020, the administration approved Texas' request to implement a Medicaid family planning program that bars patients from accessing care at Planned Parenthood or other entities that also provide abortion.
The Texas case represented "the first time the federal government has allowed a state to explicitly waive Medicaid's free choice of provider for family planning provision," Lau said.
In practical terms, this did not change anything on the ground in Texas, because six years earlier, the state had launched a fully state-funded program that effectively barred access to Planned Parenthood through the program. But the approval of Texas' plan "could open the floodgates for other anti-abortion politicians to follow suit," Lau said, noting that similar waivers are pending from Idaho, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
It's important to note these changes have been in the regulatory realm rather than passed by Congress. Abortion rights advocates say that a victory by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden this fall could reverse these policies.
For now, however, we rate this a Promise Kept.