A gaggle of practically 100 Home Democrats is asking on Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to revive tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in federal family planning grants to greater than a dozen organizations which were frozen for greater than two months.
In a letter to Kennedy despatched on Friday and seen first by The Hill, 95 lawmakers mentioned the organizations which had their Title X funding frozen on March 31 — together with 9 Deliberate Parenthood clinics — are nonetheless at nighttime concerning the standing of their grants.
On the time, the clinics mentioned they obtained letters from the administration saying the grants have been being “briefly withheld” because of doable civil proper violations and President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “taxpayer subsidization of open borders.”
Greater than two months later, the lawmakers mentioned the grantees “stay with out funding and have obtained no communication from the administration concerning the standing of the investigations, the anticipated timeline, or the way forward for their funding.”
HHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“Congress has already appropriated these funds, and the administration has a duty to distribute them with out undue delay or obstruction, making certain that vital care is just not disrupted for thousands and thousands of people that depend on Title X providers,” the group of lawmakers wrote.
The letter was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), and signed by 91 different Democrats.
Title X is the nation’s solely federal program devoted to offering reasonably priced contraception and different sexual and reproductive well being care to low-income Individuals and has carried out so because the Seventies.
The lawmakers timed the letter to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a constitutional proper to privateness concerning contraception and reproductive choices.
“Nevertheless, as a result of actions of this administration, reproductive freedom is underneath risk,” the lawmakers wrote.
The primary Trump administration prohibited providers from receiving Title X funding in the event that they talked about abortion or referred sufferers for abortions. It additionally required clinics to assemble separate amenities for the process and different providers.
Greater than a dozen grantees, together with all Deliberate Parenthood associates nationwide, left this system in protest due to the rule.
The Biden administration reversed Trump’s Title X rule in 2021.