Last Call For The Road To GIlead, Con't

A three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit ruled that the Trump regime can begin cutting Title X family planning funding while Planned Parenthood's lawsuit against the government plays out, a sign that the appellate court sees the Trump regime prevailing in its quest to harm women.

A federal appeals court this morning said the Trump administration's family planning rules can take effect nationwide while several lawsuits play out, delivering a major blow to Planned Parenthood and states challenging the overhaul.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Trump administration's request to lift national injunctions ordered by lower federal courts in Oregon and Washington state, as well as a statewide injunction in California.

A panel of three judges, all appointed by previous Republican presidents, said the administration will likely prevail in the legal battle over the Title X family planning program since the Supreme Court held up similar Reagan-era rules almost 30 years ago, though they were reversed by the Clinton administration before taking effect.

"Absent a stay, HHS will be forced to allow taxpayer dollars to be spent in a manner that it has concluded violates the law, as well as the Government’s important policy interest in ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not go to fund or subsidize abortions," the judges wrote in a 3-0 opinion.

Barring further court orders, the Trump administration can enforce a rule finalized this spring that strips federal Title X funding from any clinic that provides abortions or abortion referrals. The administration and anti-abortion movement have celebrated the rules for blocking tens of millions of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood, which serves a large portion of the 4 million low-income patients receiving family planning and health services through the program.

Provider groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have called this a "gag rule" and warned that it will interfere with sensitive conversations between doctors and patients.

For the first time in the Title X program's decades-long history, the new rules also allow funding to faith-based clinics opposing abortion and contraception and to promote "natural" family planning methods, including abstinence. 

The plan to criminalize safe abortion procedures (or to effectively eliminate access to them) and to then start pulling funding for contraception and education for low-income women is being done on purpose, to make women having sexual independence so costly that only wealthy white women can afford it.

For the rest of America, (and for migrants too, let's not forget the Trump regime is literally putting migrant women in camps and taking their kids from them at this point) the goal is to trap them in the underclass.  Gotta have that private prison pipeline, you know.

And the Road to Gilead continues.