FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 18, 2018
Contact: Megan Connor (DC)
703-522-2214
Candice Mercer (LA)
310-556-2500
Trump-Pence Administration Will Impose Deadly Gag Rule on Women’s Health Clinics
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump-Pence Administration intends to impose a gag rule on all women’s clinics receiving Title X funding prohibiting doctors, nurses, and all healthcare professionals from providing information about abortion.
Title X, our nation’s family planning program which began in 1971, provides through clinics or public and nonprofit entities receiving Title X funding a wide range of birth control and preventive health services to poor women, many of whom are women of color, and/or uninsured women and adolescents. The new domestic gag rule would prevent doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers at these clinics from providing any information about abortion to their patients. This rule would also prohibit such clinics from referring patients to abortion providers.
“This dangerous anti-woman and anti-science gag rule would take away from poor women, uninsured women, and adolescents their basic reproductive health services and would result in harming vulnerable women and girls,” said Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
This rule is designed to prohibit patients eligible for Title X funding from receiving birth control, cancer screening, STI treatments, and a whole host of preventive health services from many clinics such as Planned Parenthood. Such a domestic gag rule not only violates women’s basic human rights, but violates best medical practices and denies Title X patients from receiving comprehensive reproductive health information and services.
“We know that the Global Gag Rule that was reinstated and expanded by the Trump-Pence Administration is resulting in desperately needed services being cut, health clinics forced to close, and an increase in maternal mortality, maternal illness, and unsafe abortions. Bottom line, whether in the Global South or the United States, such a punitive and dangerous rule will increase maternal mortality and cause needless suffering,” continued Smeal.
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