Washington Post: Biden administration reverses Trump-era rule prohibiting federally funded health care providers from making abortion referrals

The Post said that the new change announced Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services means Title X funds can once again be received by health care providers "even if they refer patients for abortions," with the adjustment going into effect in early November.

After HHS, under then-President Donald Trump, made the prohibition effective in 2019, nearly 1,000 clinics dropped out of the Title X program that had been providing the federal funds, the Post said, citing the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and policy organization. The newspaper said that the change two years ago also meant that "half-dozen states no longer had any health centers in the program."

The changes by President Joe Biden's HHS come as Democrats look for ways to increase federal support for abortion access as Republican-led states move to restrict access to the procedure through strict legislation. It also comes just as the US Supreme Court begins its new term, in which the majority-conservative court will review a Mississippi law in a case that is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and represents the most important abortion dispute in some 30 years.

Established in 1970 under the Nixon administration, Title X had until recently provided more than $250 million in funding to clinics that offer affordable birth control, cancer screening, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and other reproductive health care and family planning services.

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