White House Offers to Let Planned Parenthood Keep Federal Funding if it Halts Abortions

The White House has made an informal offer to Planned Parenthood that it could keep federal funding if it agreed to stop providing abortion services – an offer the health provider said it has rejected.

The New York Times reported Monday that the White House made the offer, unofficially, to spare Planned Parenthood from losing some $500 million annually. The proposal, the Times reports, grew out of concerns that efforts by Republicans to eliminate federal support to the organization would result in a public backlash.

Trump confirmed that negotiations have been taking place in a statement to the Times.

"As I said throughout the campaign, I am pro-life and I am deeply committed to investing in women's health and plan to significantly increase federal funding in support of nonabortion services such as cancer screenings," he said. "Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion, even those who identify as pro-choice. There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women's health, while not providing abortion services."

Planned Parenthood said the offer is a non-starter.

"The White House proposal that Planned Parenthood stop providing abortion is the same demand opponents of women's health have been pushing for decades, as a part of their long-standing effort to end women's access to safe, legal abortion," Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards said in a statement. "Planned Parenthood has always stood strong against these attacks on our patients and their ability to access the full range of reproductive health care. We are glad that the White House understands that taking away the preventive care Planned Parenthood provides is deeply unpopular and would be a disaster for women's health care."

A Quinnipiac University poll in late January found that 70 percent of voters support the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions, while opposing the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood by a 2-1 margin.

Trump is a relative newcomer to the anti-abortion movement, publicly supporting legal abortion until 2011.

During the presidential campaign, he sometimes spoke in support of Planned Parenthood, while still saying he favored eliminating its federal funding.

"Millions and millions of women – cervical cancer, breast cancer – are helped by Planned Parenthood," he said at a debate hosted by CNN in February 2016. "I would defund it because I'm pro-life, but millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood."

But many congressional Republicans have made eliminating federal funding for the organization an urgent priority – one that became possible when they held onto majorities in both the House and Senate and gained an ally in the White House in Trump.

The funds that flow from the federal government to Planned Parenthood annually do not come in a single budget line item: The money comes from Medicaid reimbursements and through Title X, the family planning federal grant program established in 1970.

Nor is it used to pay for abortions, as the 40-year-old Hyde Amendment prohibits most federal dollars from being used for abortion services.

Nonetheless, abortion opponents say any federal support frees up other sources of funding that Planned Parenthood can then use to provide abortions.