(LifeSiteNews) – Planned Parenthood is suing the Trump administration to challenge updated Title X funding guidelines issued earlier this year that could render the abortion giant ineligible for so-called “family planning” grants.
In April, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) issued updated guidelines for Title X applications, which drop contraception promotion in favor of “natural family planning methods,” tout an objective to “strengthen family formation and assist clients in achieving healthy pregnancies,” promote a “science driven approach to healthcare,” and require applicants to reject abortion as a method of family planning, end support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, ensure funds “are not used to facilitate or incentivize illegal immigration,” and “protect parental rights to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
The new standards threaten to disqualify longtime Title X recipients such as Planned Parenthood, so the nation’s largest abortion chain announced on July 29 that it is suing over them, arguing that because “Planned Parenthood affiliates across the federation received more than 50 million dollars in Title X funds,” the “harm inflicted on Planned Parenthood affiliates and other highly qualified applicants by these unlawful changes would be, without a doubt, clear and devastating, and would significantly reduce access to care for low-income patients nationwide.”
“Planned Parenthood health centers have provided affordable sexual and reproductive health care, including birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and wellness exams to millions of people through Title X,” claimed Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson. “We are suing the Trump administration because, yet again, it is trying to make it harder for people to get the vital care they need at Planned Parenthood.” (For years, Planned Parenthood’s annual reports have consistently shown the organization offering fewer and fewer non-abortive procedures relative to its steadily growing abortion business.)
State and federal cuts to the abortion industry’s government funding have significantly impacted its bottom line. According to Operation Rescue, 54 abortion facilities shut their doors in 2024, 36 of which were Planned Parenthood locations.
Last July, President Donald Trump signed into law his controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (BBB), a wide-ranging policy package that included a one-year ban on federal tax dollars going through Medicaid to entities that commit abortions for reasons other than rape, incest, or supposed threats to the mother’s life. But that ban expired last month, allowing much of the abortion industry’s federal funding to resume.
The new Title X rules help cut off more money to the abortion industry, but pro-life activists continue to call for restoration of more comprehensive defunding measures, such as reintroduction of the Protect Life Rule, a key policy of Trump’s first term that required “clear financial and physical separation between Title X-funded projects and programs or facilities where abortion is a method of family planning” and banned “referral for abortion as a method of family planning.” It reduced Planned Parenthood’s annual funding by almost $60 million, and disqualified the abortion giant from Title X regardless of its DEI policies, lack thereof, or any other unrelated criteria.