President Trump is expected to reveal more details about his administration’s plans to further restrict the use of federal planning funds when he speaks to an anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List gala tonight. Religious Right groups that are intent on destroying Planned Parenthood have pushed for, and are celebrating, the Trump administration’s plans to deny family planning funds to groups that perform abortions.
On Monday, the Catholic Medical Association celebrated the fact that under the expected changes to Department of Health and Human Services, it and other faith-based organizations will be eligible to receive Title X Family Planning grant money even though the groups oppose contraception.
“We at the CMA have been talking with the White House about this obstacle which prevented us from accessing the funding and have been strongly urging the administration to make funds available for abstinence and natural family programs,” said CMA President Peter Morrow in a press release. “Now that the abortion and contraception referral is gone we are now finally eligible and applying.”
The CMA, which grew out a Catholic physicians group that in the 1960s opposed “socialized medicine” in the form of Medicare and Medicaid, represents doctors and other medical professionals that have declared “steadfast fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church.” A 2010 brochure called “Homosexuality and Hope” declares that same-sex attraction is “preventable and treatable.”
It is not yet clear just how far the administration’s new regulations will go do deny funds to groups that even provide women with information about or referrals for abortion, in effect imposing a domestic version of the international gag rule that the Trump administration has imposed and expanded, threatening the health of women around the world.
