The Biden administration is lifting a Trump-era rule imposed on family planning clinics receiving federal funding, which banned them from referring patients to abortion service providers.
As a result of the Trump administration move many family planning clinics left the program in protest, but starting November 8 that rule will be gone, freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds, the Associated Press reports.
“The Department of Health and Human Services said its new regulation will restore the federal family planning program to the way it ran under the Obama administration, when clinics were able to refer women seeking abortions to a provider,” the AP adds. “Women’s groups labeled the Trump policy a ‘gag rule,’ and medical organizations called it a violation of the clinician-patient relationship.”
The announcement comes on the first day of the news U.S. Supreme Court’s season, one in which it will review a case that could blast a hole through the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision securing the right to an abortion.