The Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services appeared to break its own guidelines in canceling Oklahoma’s $4.5 million Title X grant.
The grant was originally awarded to the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) for “family planning services”, which typically refers to “pregnancy prevention, testing, and counseling as well as sexually transmitted infection and disease testing and treatment, and other preventative screenings”.
But the OSDH announced that the HHS’s Office of Population Affairs “determined our Title X program is out of compliance” due to the state’s laws and Biden administration’s policies on abortion.
As a result, the $4.5 million federal grant was suspended.
Oklahoma Republicans immediately struck back, sending a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding the “immediate reinstallation” of the grant.
“Abortion is not family planning; it is family destruction. Every abortion takes an unborn child’s life. Oklahoma’s laws protect women and unborn children from the violence of abortion in the interest of promoting families, keeping Oklahomans safe, and protecting life. OSDH’s decision to follow federal and state law by protecting unborn life and seeking the welfare of individual patients and their families is a noble one,” the legislators wrote.
Move Goes Against HHS Guidelines
The move is especially confounding as they go against federal parameters for Title X.
Indeed, Section 1008 of Title X itself says “None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”
And each year since 1976, Congress votes to specify that Title X funds “shall not be expended for abortions”.
“HHS cannot simply will words to mean what they do not; we are a country governed by the rule of law. When the law says ‘no funds,’ Congress really means ‘no funds,’” members of Congress warned.
“The Biden administration’s obsession with abortion seems to know no end.”
Oklahoma’s legislators expect to hear back from Becerra by June 12th.
