The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (H.R. 217), also known as the Pence bill, imposes extreme and unnecessary restrictions on Title X funding that would threaten women’s access to essential primary health care and family planning services. Though the bill’s sponsors try to draw a link between Title X funding and abortion, the fact remains that Title X funds are never used for abortion, as required by existing law. H.R. 217 puts low and middle-income women who rely on Title X clinics at risk by potentially eliminating their source of primary health care and family planning services.
H.R. 217 Would Decrease Women’s Access to Essential Health Care in a Time of Severe Economic Need
Title X providers are essential to the health of millions of Americans.i H.R. 217 would decimate the existing provider network and could leave women without access to family planning services and other essential primary health care.
- Title X Clinics Offer a Wide Variety of Essential Health Services
Program guidelines require Title X clinics to offer a variety of services, including contraceptive supplies and counseling, blood pressure evaluation, diabetes testing, breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening and STI and HIV screening.ii Many women rely on their Title X provider as their usual source of health care.iii If it weren’t for Title X clinics, many women would not have access to contraceptive services and other reproductive health care at all.iv
- H.R. 217 Would Jeopardize the Safety Net Currently Provided by Title X Clinics
By prohibiting Title X funding from going to health care providers that also provide abortions with their own separate funds, H.R. 217 would decimate the network that provides safety net health care services to women and families in need.
- Currently just 88 entities receive Title X grants, which they then distribute to their networks of thousands of clinics, which provide services to approximately five million people.v Under H.R. 217, a clinic would be denied Title X funding if the organization which funded it also performed abortions with non-Title X money, even if the clinic was the only family planning provider in the area.
- Under H.R. 217, a hospital would be banned from receiving Title X funds if it funded a nearby clinic’s STI screening services and the nearby clinic also performs abortions with separate funds.
Current Law Already Prohibits Title X Funding from Being Used for Abortion
Current law prohibits Title X funding from being “used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” vi Title X grantees may not provide pregnancy options counseling that “promotes abortion or encourages persons to obtain abortion ….” vii Title X grantees must also separate Title X family-planning activities and funds from abortion activities.viii
In fact, the Title X program prevents the need for abortion by increasing access to contraception and preventing unwanted pregnancies. Title X funded health clinics help to prevent 1.94 million unintended pregnancies in 2006, 810,000 of which would likely have ended in abortion.ix Restricting Title X funding to providers who do not provide abortions would decrease the number of Title X providers, decrease access to family planning services and increase the number of unintended pregnancies.
H.R. 217 Is Far-Reaching and Extreme
Although similar measures to place restrictions on Title X funding have been continually proposed, there is a reason these measures have been and should continue to be roundly rejected.x This measure does not, as its proponents claim, reduce the need for abortion or address taxpayer funding of abortion. H.R. 217 threatens health care for low- and middle-income women who are uninsured and turn to Title X clinics for family planning and other preventive health care. H.R. 217 would not only decrease access to STI and cancer screening, it would also reduce access to contraceptive services that prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion. This bill is pure pandering by anti-choice politicians who have made it clear that they are willing to dismantle crucial medical services provision for low-income families for political gain.
We urge you to oppose the harmful and unnecessary H.R. 217.
For more information, please contact the National Women’s Law Center at (202) 588-5180.
_________________________________________________________
i Office of Population Affairs, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., Family Planning, http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familyplanning/index.html (last visited Jan. 7, 2011) (approximately five million women and men receive family planning services through Title X grantees).
ii Office of Family Planning, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., Program Guidelines for Project Grants for Family Planning Services 21-22 (2001).
iii Guttmacher Inst., supra note iv at 3 (“More than six in 10 women who obtained care at a family planning center in 2006 considered the center their usual source of medical care.”).
iv See Lisa Kaeser et al., Alan Guttmacher Inst., Title X at 25: Balancing National Family Planning Needs with State Flexibility (1996) (Title X health clinics are the only source of family planning services for more than 80 percent of the women they serve.).
v Office of Population Affairs, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., Family Planning, http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familyplanning/index.html (last visited Jan. 7, 2011) (data from calendar year 2008).
vi 42 U.S.C. § 300a-6 (2010); 42 C.F.R. § 59.5 (2010).
vii Provision of Abortion-Related Services in Family Planning Services Projects, 65 Fed. Reg. 41,281 (July 3, 2000).
ix Guttmacher Inst., In Brief: Facts on Publicly Funded Contraceptive Services in the United States 4 (2010).
x Rep. Vitter first introduced a similar amendment to the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill in 2001, which he then withdrew. Two similar appropriations amendments were introduced and defeated in 2007. In 2009 Rep. Pence introduced the same appropriations amendment, which was defeated yet again. In the 110th and 111th Congress Rep. Pence introduced bills entitled the “Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act,” neither of which left committee.