What’s Title X Got To Do With Me?
The Title X Family Planning Program is a federal program that provides affordable birth control and reproductive health care services specifically for low-income patients. The program funds nearly 4,000 service sites nationwide includes public health departments and non-profit health centers including Planned Parenthood. Title X funding is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs (OPA) and serves approximately four million people per year.
Title X was created in 1970 specifically to provide low-income families with comprehensive family planning services and preventive health services including:
Wellness exams
Birth control/contraception counseling and provision
Breast and cervical cancer screenings
Testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections
Pregnancy diagnosis and counseling
The Gag Rule
The Trump administration instated a “gag rule” which prohibits health care providers serving in Title X funded institutions from referring patients for abortion care except in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency. Basically, if a health center received Title X money from the government then it is against the law for them to give patients information about abortion.
While health care providers are being forced to withhold facts about abortion care, crisis pregnancy centers* (CPCs) around the country are legally allowed to lie and trick people seeking abortion care.
These provisions, combined with new language saying that Title X grantees are not required to provide every acceptable and effective method of family planning, means that patients are losing access to essential health care and information.