YAKIMA, Wash. – State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed suit in Yakima against the Trump administration, challenging a rule he said would curtail access to reproductive health care for low-income women.
Ferguson’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday, seeks to block a new rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would cut off federal funding to family planning clinics that perform abortions. Ferguson’s lawsuit names HHS Secretary Alex M. Azar and the department as defendants.
The suit was filed in Yakima because the proposed rule would have “disproportionate impacts to rural Washingtonian women,” according to a news release issued by Ferguson’s office.
“If this rule goes into effect, it will leave 21 Washington counties without a Title X provider at all, 11 of those in Eastern Washington,” Ferguson was quoted as saying in the release. “As a result, some Washingtonians will need to travel hundreds of miles to receive family planning care, while others will lose access altogether.”
And a spokesman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho said the Trump administration’s proposed rule would also cut off women’s access to such things as cancer screenings, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and health care.
“All of our health centers, including Yakima and Sunnyside, are in rural, medically underserved areas,” said Paul Dillon, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood.
HHS has not issued a response to the suit or responded to an email seeking comment by press time. Attempts to contact Lenette Lindemann, founder of Image Point Mobile Medical Service and an organizer of the Walk for Life in Yakima, were not successful.
Title X is a federal grant program that provides access to affordable, preventative reproductive health care. In Washington state, the program provides funding to 85 clinics where, in 2017, more than 18,000 women were able to avoid unwanted pregnancies and the need for more than 6,000 abortions were eliminated, Ferguson’s lawsuit said.
It also saved the state $113 million in health care costs, the suit said.
The new rule, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published Monday and would go into effect in May, would take federal Title X funds away from programs such as Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions along with family planning and reproductive care. It also requires that family-planning providers not offer referrals for abortions, a so-called “gag rule.”
Instead, they must direct pregnant women into prenatal care programs.
In his suit, Ferguson argues that the gag rule violates Congress’ requirement that Title X only subsidize voluntary programs that provide women with neutral information so they can decide on a course of action themselves.
“The Final Rule permits Title X providers’ own views to dictate the information and offering only biased information, regardless of the patients’ wishes,” the suit states.
It also cuts funding to programs that offer abortions, even though federal funding for abortions has been prohibited since 1976.
Dillon said Planned Parenthood’s abortion services are separate from the other services it offers under Title X, including contraceptives and health screening.
“This is a real, direct political attack on Planed Parenthood health centers,” Dillon said, noting that those centers provide services for about 80 percent of the more than 90,000 patients under Title X in Washington.
This story was updated to correct the name of Planned Parenthood spokesman Paul Dillon.