As many know, the current administration has submitted proposed in rules for Title X funding, the domestic gag rule would make it very difficult for clinics who serve women under Title X funding to prescribe birth control or give adequate preventive care including information about safe, legal abortion. The Social Responsibilities Council and UU FaithAction NJ have signed on to a letter (see below) that will be sent to HHS secretary and to NJ U.S. Senators and Congresspeople.
Written by MHML coalition and signed by UUFaith ActionNJ and by USR Social Responsibilities Council – July 7, 2018
The Honorable Secretary Alex Azar
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Hubert H. Humphrey Building
200 Independence Avenue S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20204
July 7, 2018
Dear Secretary Azar:
The proposed “domestic gag rule” of the Title X family planning program is an attempt to take away women’s rights and violates the ethics of the practice of medicine. We are deeply concerned about the proposed rule’s impact on a woman’s ability to access critical reproductive health care. We also feel strongly that the domestic gag rule interferes in the relationship between patient and health care provider. The undersigned organizations strongly oppose the proposed domestic gag rule of the Title X program.
By prohibiting health care providers in the program from giving complete and accurate information about pregnancy, including referring their patients for abortion, this policy would deny people the information they need to make their own informed health care decisions. For decades, Title X law has been clear: Health care providers cannot withhold information from you about your pregnancy options. This rule would mean they can.
On top of banning information on abortion, the domestic gag rule is also designed to make it impossible for Planned Parenthood health centers and other specialized reproductive health care providers to serve patients in the program, which would mean patients in communities across the country would lose access to basic health care. The gag rule would have a devastating impact on women and families in New Jersey.
Title X is the nation’s only program dedicated to providing affordable birth control and reproductive health care to people with low incomes or who are otherwise underserved. On average, nearly 100,000 women, men, and young people go to New Jersey’s Title X-funded health centers for basic, confidential preventive health care, including cancer screenings, birth control, sexually transmitted infection (STI) screenings, pregnancy testing, and annual exams each year.
Making it impossible for reproductive health care providers like Planned Parenthood to keep seeing Title X patients and preventing all Title X-funded providers from offering critical information to patients would have serious consequences and an extraordinarily harmful impact on communities in our cities and across the nation. In New Jersey we know firsthand the effects of restricting access to critical family planning services. In 2010 the Christine administration eliminated family planning funding from our state budget. Since 2010 we have seen a dramatic increase in STI rates and disproportionate increases in rates of breast and cervical cancer for women of color.
The undersigned organizations strongly urge you to reject the application of a domestic “gag rule” to the Title X program and protect full access to reproductive health care for New Jersey and the nation.
Respectfully,
UUFaith ActionNJ
and
The Social Responsibilities Council of the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood
