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The Vitter Amendment
Stop Publicly Funding Abortion in Private Organizations
July 2001
By Timothy T.C. McGhee and Michael Schwartz

The Vitter Amendment to the FY 2002 Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations Bill disqualifies private agencies that provide chemical or surgical abortions from receiving grants or contracts under the Title X family planning program. The text of the Vitter Amendment:

“None of the funds appropriated in this Act may be used to make any award of a grant or contract under Title X of the Public Health Service Act for fiscal year 2002 or any subsequent fiscal year to any private grantee, delegate, or clinic that provides chemical or surgical abortion.”

The Current Situation:

Title X (“ten”), the U.S. family planning program, specifies that public funding “may not be used in programs in which abortion is a method of family planning.” In other words, federal funds cannot be used for abortion directly, but those funds can indirectly fund abortion by funding everything needed to keep a killing provider alive.

A conservative estimate is that about $50 million goes to private agencies that provide abortion. Many of these providers obtain the funds to:

In effect, your tax dollars are keeping some abortion providers in business. These subsidies to the abortion industry are contrary both to the intent of the law and to public opinion, which is strongly opposed to federal subsidies to the abortion industry.

Who Would Be Affected?

“Any private grantee, delegate, or clinic that provides chemical or surgical abortions” would be barred from receiving a grant or contract under Title X. This includes both direct and indirect funding, and it applies to all the parts of such an organization.

Examples:

The Vitter Amendment would not affect public health departments, public hospitals and other agencies of state or local governments that receive grants and contracts under Title X. Their policies regarding abortion would not affect their eligibility to participate in Title X.

What Changes

After the Vitter Amendment goes into effect, these private organizations have two options:

  1. stop offering abortion and remain eligible to participate as family planning providers under Title X, or
  2. continue providing abortion and lose their eligibility to receive funds under Title X.

Access to Family Planning Services: The Vitter Amendment would not deny anyone access to family planning services. In every locality where a private abortion provider is receiving Title X funds, there are alternative sources for family planning services, including both public agencies and private agencies that do not offer abortions.

The Vitter Amendment may make family planning services more accessible to clients who object to having to go to an abortion provider for such services.

The Courts

Some previous attempts to come to grips with the problem of funding abortion through Title X were reversed by court action because they interfered with the free speech of grantees. The Vitter Amendment, instead, relies on a simple, bright-line distinction: if a private agency provides chemical or surgical abortions, it is ineligible to receive Title X funds. It does not touch any question of counseling, advocacy, information or expression.

A very similar Missouri law has been upheld by both the Missouri Supreme Court and by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Planned Parenthood v. Dempsey.

14 key fourteen members of the Appropriations Committee on the Vitter Amentment: