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Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York.

ALBANY, July 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is willing to take the Trump administration to court in order to keep family planning dollars flowing to the abortion industry, he declared on Monday.

In May, President Donald Trump announced that the administration would exclude facilities that perform or refer for abortions from receiving Title X family planning funds. It’s expected to eliminate more than $50 million of the $500+ million Planned Parenthood receives from federal taxpayers every year, to the applause of pro-lifers and scorn of abortion advocates like Cuomo.

“If enacted, [the rule change] will decrease the quality and availability of Title X services and impede the rights of New Yorkers” to “access the full range of reproductive health care,” the governor claimed in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

It “violates long-standing principles limiting the interference of Congress in the sovereignty of individual States and impairment of private contracts,” and “demonstrate a profound disregard for science and medical best practices,” he added.

Cuomo concluded the letter by threatening that New York would “explore all legal avenues available to us to ensure that the proposed rules' attack does not threaten the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers and the integrity of New York's Family Planning Program.”

The Trump Administration has not yet responded to Cuomo’s letter.

Pro-life Americans consider the reduction of abortion “access” a feature rather than a bug, but note for the record that New York has some of the most permissive abortion and contraception laws in the country, making it unlikely the rule change will prevent anyone truly intent on abortion or obtaining birth control from doing so.

As for the rule change’s potential impact on actual women’s health services, the administration isn’t eliminating the money; it plans to redirect it to Women's Qualified Health Centers that dramatically outnumber Planned Parenthood locations across the United States.

Monday’s letter is just one of many moves Cuomo has made to signal his support of abortion-on-demand in office. Earlier this month, he issued an executive order placing new mandates on insurance companies to subsidize contraception without cost sharing, which he framed as a preemptive defense against a more conservative Supreme Court.

Cuomo has also called on the state Senate to vote on legislation codifying Roe v. Wade’s protection of abortion in state law, embraced late-term abortion, and called for mandating that abortions themselves be provided at no cost as well. In 2013 he promoted a women’s “bill of rights” that critics said would effectively allow abortion up until birth, and in 2014 declared that “right-to-life” supporters “have no place in the state of New York.”