ANN ARBOR — Yesterday Planned Parenthood of Michigan announced that the Trump-Pence administration has forced PPMI out of Title X, the nation's decades-old bipartisan program for affordable birth control and reproductive health care after a long fight. Title X has long been the nation's only federal grant program that provides family planning and preventative health services to roughly 4 million people across the U.S. Perhaps the best-known organization funded by Title X is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood of Michigan serves nearly 70 percent of people – more than 42,000 in 2018 alone – who access affordable birth control, STD testing, cancer screenings and more through Title X in Michigan.
"Unfortunately, the new gag rule that is being enforced by the Trump-Pence administration makes it impossible to provide comprehensive care and information to our patients consistent with medical ethics and our evidence-based standards of care. We refuse to let the Trump administration bully us into withholding abortion information from our patients in Michigan," said Lori Carpentier, President and CEO of PPMI in a press release. "The gag rule is unethical and dangerous, and we will not subject our patients to it."
Carpentier went on to say in the release that despite these changes, PPMI is dedicated to providing "compassionate, high-quality health care to people in communities throughout Michigan."
"These rule changes do nothing to improve the quality of care for patients or make it easier for them to access the services they need – they were intended solely to harm Planned Parenthood and other abortion care providers, but it's our patients who will be most impacted," she said.
PPMI said that as of right now, agencies in Michigan and across the U.S. that take part in the nation's Title X program are mostly at capacity. That means the 42,330 patients who accessed care at Planned Parenthood last year using Title X funding may not have somewhere else to go.
"That means for people in Jackson, Kalamazoo, Kent, Muskegon, Oakland, and Washtenaw counties, there is no other option for the high quality, low- or no-cost reproductive health care and birth control that Title X providers guarantee," the press release stated.
This is a developing story.
