Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday introduced a bill aiming to stop the federal public health agency from using funds to coerce pro-life states into supporting abortion.
The one-page bill, formally titled “States Choose Life Act of 2023,” states that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should not demand states make referrals for abortion as a condition of receiving the Title X health care funding.
Title X is a federal program dedicated to providing birth control and other reproductive health services for mostly low-income women. In 2019, the Trump administration banned clinics receiving Title X grants from discussing or referring their pregnant clients to abortion, saying that American taxpayers have been wrongfully forced to subsidize the abortion industry through federal funding.
The Biden administration started reversing the policy in October 2021. That came after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to weigh on the constitutionality of the Trump-era Title X rule, which forced pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood to abandon the federal program.
Title X Funding Used ‘as a Cudgel’
Green called out HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, accusing his department of “using Title X funding as a cudgel to force states to participate in abortions or risk losing funding.”“States should be allowed to do so without suffering repercussions, financial or otherwise, from the federal government,” the congressman said in a statement. “No medical professional should be forced against his or her conscience to refer patients for abortions.”
To justify the decision, HHS officials wrote in a letter to Tennessee health chief Ralph Alvarado that the state “is out of compliance with the Title X regulatory requirements,” because the state’s policy only called for providers who got Title X funding to share information “regarding all options that are legal in the State of Tennessee.”
“The inclusion of ‘legal in the state of Tennessee’ is not an acceptable addition to your policy as Title X recipients must still follow all Federal regulatory requirements regarding nondirective options counseling and referrals,” the HHS said.
Green dismissed that argument, claiming that the Biden administration’s Title X rule is inconsistent with the Public Health Service Act of 1970, under which the federal family planning program was created. The 1970 law includes a provision forbidding “funds appropriated under” Title X from being “used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”
In a June 20 letter to Becerra, Green further argued that the revocation of his state’s Title X funding was motivated by a “pro-abortion agenda” since the state’s health care policy didn’t change much except for banning most abortions.
“The only recent change in Tennessee law and practice, as it pertains to Title X, is the law to protect life,” he wrote. “There were no other intervening circumstances or changes that could have provoked this revocation of funds.”
“Your department is targeting Tennessee because this administration believes that everyone must kowtow to the radical pro-abortion agenda,” the letter continued.
“Using Title X funds as a club to beat states into submission on a political issue is a gross violation of your position, especially when considering that these funds have supported Tennessee families for over 50 years.”
Tuesday’s proposed bill also comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion access at the federal level for 50 years. In its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the high court’s conservative majority voted 5-4 to allow individual states to decide on their own whether to restrict or expand abortion access.
