Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio will draw on emergency funds from its national umbrella organization rather than comply with a Trump administration directive that bans federally funded clinics from making abortion referrals.
The move is the latest blow to an organization that already has lost about $1.5 million in grant funding this year in Ohio, where courts have upheld state legislation to cut off taxpayer money for organizations that offer abortion services or refer women to clinics that perform abortions.
In 2019, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio had been awarded $4 million in federal Title X funding, plus $4.3 million for the Ohio Department of Health, which doesn’t operate its own clinics and instead distributes funds to other public departments and programs.
“In the state of Ohio we have seen attacks to safe and legal abortion access through state legislative actions. Now as a result of federal action through the Trump administration and the courts, we’re seeing this is not only an attack on safe, legal abortion but also an attack on reproductive health care,” said Sarah Inskeep, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notified the clinics Monday that it would start enforcing the regulation after a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted a stay of injunctions against the rule by lower courts.
Planned Parenthood will ask the 9th circuit court to reconsider the decision, which allows the rules to take effect while the federal government appeals lower-court rulings.
