The Attorney General of California, Xavier Beccera, along with 22 states sued President Trump over the changes to the Title X funding. Trump’s administration enacted changes to the family grant program known as Title X.

Essentially, the Title X program provides funding for Obama’s Planned Parenthood policies. Trump’s administration enacted new stipulations under the “protect life” rule that bars funding towards abortion related programs and policies. Under the new rule, Title X money will no longer be permitted “to perform, promote, or refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”

In effect, approximately 600 Planned Parenthood centers across the nation could lose up to a quarter of their funding. Obviously, abortion-right supporters were outraged by the policy. Therefore, many states, including California, filed a lawsuit as a measure of resistance towards the new changes. Many opponents of the new changes are concerned that clinics may go out of business due to lack of funding as well as a decline in quality of healthcare for women. But more alarming to the opponents of this new “protect life” rule is that now the federal government is drawing a clear distinction between parenthood planning and abortion.

Naturally, Trump’s more conservative supporters backed the new rule changes. Many supporters of the new changes cite that Planned Parenthood has been responsible for too many abortions. Planned Parenthood was responsible for over 300,000 abortions last year, or approximately one-third of all abortions within the United States. Supporters are delighted that there is a clear distinction between family planning and abortion as a method of family planning. Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the anti-abortion March for Life, expressed that “abortion is not part of family planning.”

In the past, Reagan and Bush have attempted similar policies to make an explicit distinction between family planning and abortion under the same Title X grant. Similarly, abortion rights activists took legal measures as a way of resisting the new changes. The case, Rust v. Sullivan, ended in favor of the distinction between family planning and abortion. Therefore, it would not be unprecedented for the contemporary legal resistance to fail as well.

When asked about his thoughts on the new policies, Tony Cheng(12) expressed that to some degree he agrees that “planned parenthood should not advocate for abortion as a primary method for planning out parenthood, but he is concerned for the stipulation that abortion can no longer be referred for to women when they visit doctors for family planning.”