The program makes available more than $250 million a year to clinics to provide birth control and basic health care services, mainly to low-income women, many of them from minority communities. The rules established under former President Donald Trump, a Republican, prompted a mass exit by service providers affiliated with Planned Parenthood, as well as several states and other independent organizations.
Women’s groups labeled the Trump policies a “gag rule,” and medical organizations called it a violation of the clinician-patient relationship. But religious and social conservatives praised the policy for imposing a strict separation between family planning services and abortion.
This article originally appeared here.
