ABORTION/PLANNED PARENTHOOD/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Clinics that provide abortions or refer patients to places that do would lose federal funding under a new Trump administration rule that takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood, according to three administration officials. The rule, which is to be announced Friday [5-18-18], is a top priority of social conservatives and is the latest move by President Trump to impose curbs on abortion rights, in this case by withholding money from any facility or program that promotes abortion or refers patients to a caregiver that will provide one. The policy would be a return to one instituted in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan that required abortion services to have a ‘physical separation’ and ‘separate personnel’ from other family planning activities. That policy is often described as a domestic gag rule because it barred caregivers at facilities that received family planning funds from providing any information to patients about an abortion or where to receive one. But a Trump administration official who detailed the forthcoming proposal said the new version of the policy would not impose a blanket prohibition on abortion counseling.”
-Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Administration to Tie Health Facilities’ Funding to Abortion Restrictions,” The New York Times online, May 17, 2018