We can help you submit a public comment on the Title X “Gag Rule”
The Trump administration has proposed new “gag rule” restrictions around Title X funding. The restrictions would force health care providers to knowingly withhold important information from patients seeking reproductive health care from Title X funded family planning clinics, including Planned Parenthood and independent providers.
The Title X program helps ensure that people — regardless of where they live, how much money they make, their background, or whether or not they have health insurance — have access to basic, preventive reproductive health care. Millions of patients rely on Title X every year.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking the public to weigh in on this harmful rule, and we need you to submit a public comment to protect Title X by 11:59 PM ET on July 31.
Click “Read more” below for suggested text for your public comment, which you can copy and paste into the comment box. Making your message personal, by adding your own thoughts or a story, will have the most impact.
Dear Secretary Azar, Senior Advisor Huber, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Foley:
As someone who values access to the full range of reproductive health care options, I am writing to oppose the Trump administration’s proposed “gag rule” on health care providers that participate in Title X. The proposed rule would interfere with the patient-provider relationship and deny Title X patients information they need to stay healthy. It is clearly designed to make it impossible for reproductive health-focused providers, including Planned Parenthood health centers and independent clinics, to continue to serve people through the program. The proposed rule would undermine Title X’s goals of providing comprehensive reproductive health services to people with low incomes. Furthermore, the proposed rule disregards the likely costs it will impose on patients, providers, and on society, and would exacerbate existing health disparities.
Title X family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood are critical safety net providers of needed preventive health services, including contraception, cancer screenings, STI detection and treatment, HIV education, and more. These changes will compromise the success of the Title X program and result in patients losing access to high-quality care. Forty-one percent of Title X patients rely on Planned Parenthood for their care; they are an essential safety net provider. Blocking people from getting full and accurate information about all of their options from providers like Planned Parenthood is wrong.
All patients, regardless of their race, of their income, or where they live, deserve the best medical care and information available. For decades, the Title X program has helped people with low incomes have access to basic, preventive reproductive health care. The gag rule would undermine medical ethics and the patient-provider relationship, and doctors could no longer refer their patients to high quality abortion providers, even if their patients ask how to access abortion care. This rule would make it impossible for patients to get birth control or preventive care from trusted providers, with the rules changing the Title X program’s current guarantees of full and complete information about pregnancy options.
Patients deserve facts and accurate information about all of their health care options. I urge you to oppose finalization of these rules.
Sincerely,
[Your information here]