‘Protect Life Rule’: Trump released millions to Planned Parenthood – here’s how he can defund it forever

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Trump administration has a plan to block Planned Parenthood from receiving federal family planning funding, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was extending Biden-era family planning grant awards to Planned Parenthood, sparking criticism from pro-lifers.

However, the White House has another option to cut the abortion giant’s cash flow.

The Department of Health and Human Services is developing a restored “Protect Life Rule,” an HHS official confirmed to The Daily Signal. The rule prohibits Title X family planning funds from going to organizations that perform abortions.

“The Title X Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has been noticed on the Unified Agenda and remains on it,” HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard told The Daily Signal. “HHS continues to develop a draft proposed rule.”

Once in effect, the rule would likely cause Planned Parenthood to turn down the funds to continue performing abortions. In 2020, Planned Parenthood announced it would drop out of the Title X program and forgo nearly $60 million rather than comply with the rule.

The Protect Life Rule, promulgated during the president’s first term and rescinded by the Biden administration, provides that a counselor in a Title X-funded project could “neither refer for, nor encourage, abortion.”

The “language is written, has been seen by relevant eyes, and should be a slam dunk considering they did it around this time in the first administration,” Tom McClusky, director of government affairs at CatholicVote, told The Daily Signal.

The rule would force Planned Parenthood to forgo Title X grants, according to Jamie Dangers, director of government affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

“The Protect Life Rule would basically give Planned Parenthood and other Title X grantees a choice to either separate from abortion and stay eligible for Title X grants or choose abortion and disqualify themselves from the grants—that happened in the first term,” Dangers told The Daily Signal.

Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be allowed to use federal funds for abortion, said Jennie Bradley Lichter, March for Life president and former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

“This is a ‘rule of law’ matter—holding your grantees accountable for complying with what should be clearly stated in their grant terms,” she told The Daily Signal.

Many pro-lifers have decried the White House’s decision to allow Title X funds to go to Planned Parenthood as a “betrayal.”

However, the White House faced “significant legal challenges” in stopping funds from going to Planned Parenthood, spokesman Kush Desai told media outlets. Desai said the administration issued its “fifth and final year of Title X grants that were locked in place during the Biden presidency.”

Other pro-lifers say the current administration seems to operate out of a similar playbook for defunding abortion as that of the first administration.

“They’re still on track to do a similar policy as they did the first time, a year and a half into their administration,” one pro-life operative said.

The first Trump administration continued giving Obama-era grants to abortion clinics through 2017. In 2018, it issued a short bridge award until 2019, similar to the one-year funding extension awarded to Planned Parenthood on Tuesday. In May 2018, the administration issued the Protect Life Rule.

To stay on the same timeline, the administration needs to take action on the rule by June, the operative said.

Some pro-lifers told The Daily Signal they were frustrated that the rule and the grant extensions for Planned Parenthood were not announced on the same day.

“We wish that the Trump administration had introduced the Protect Life Rule before extending the Title X grants, but they have the opportunity to introduce it now,” Americans United for Life’s Gavin Oxley told The Daily Signal.

“By introducing the Protect Life Rule, it will once again protect taxpayer dollars from funding elective abortion providers,” he said.

The pro-life movement urges the Trump administration to reinstate the Protect Life Rule “as soon as possible” to ensure taxpayer dollars are not funding abortion, Oxley said. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and nine colleagues recently penned a letter to President Donald Trump, asking him to reinstate the Protect Life Rule.

After the administration proposes the rule, HHS would begin a public comment period of 30, 60, or 90 days. It would then have to respond to substantive comments and prepare to defend the rule in court.

Pro-life operatives hope the administration will select the shortest public comment period so the final rule can be published within a few months.

Litigation will likely be brought forward the same day the rule is introduced, according to Valerie Huber, president of the Institute for Women’s Health and special representative for women’s health in Trump’s first term. Huber helped shape the Protect Life Rule under Trump 45.

The state of California sued the first Trump administration over the Protect Life Rule, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it, declaring that plaintiffs “will not prevail on the merits of their legal claims.”

“I hope they [the administration] are expecting that there is going to be litigation on the day that it is finalized,” Huber told The Daily Signal. “Be prepared for that, and be aggressive in the timing for release, putting that in the timetable.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]