(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is leading a group of 20 other attorneys general in demanding the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services not break the law as it considers a rule change that would allow for federal funding of abortions.
Title X — a federal law that funds family-planning services — expressly prohibits its funds from being used to support elective abortions. But in April, HHS proposed to overturn a policy by the previous administration robustly enforcing this legal requirement. The existing policy, issued in 2019, requires federally funded Title X family planning clinics to be physically and financially independent from abortion clinics.
Yost's letter comes as HHS is weighing the new proposal that would allow the commingling of funds and undercut the purpose of the Title X law.
“It is the law that Title X money cannot be used to support entities that provide elective abortions,” Yost said. “Anytime someone tries to circumvent this law I will be standing in their way.”
Earlier this year, 18 states joined a motion led by Ohio and AG Yost filed in the U.S. Supreme Court to defend the 2019 rules and protect funding limitations that Congress imposed when it enacted Title X. The Supreme Court today dismissed that lawsuit, in anticipation of HHS considering comments on its proposed rule.
Joining AG Yost in signing onto
the letter to HHS are attorneys general from the states of: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
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