Supreme Court allows HHS to divert funds over abortion referrals
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Biden administration to strip millions of health-care dollars from Oklahoma over its refusal to direct patients to information about abortions — a federal requirement that the state says would be at odds with its strict ban on terminating pregnancies.
Last year, the Biden administration diverted $4.5 million from Oklahoma’s family planning program, which primarily serves low-income or uninsured patients.
In challenging that decision, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the Supreme Court that state health-care organizations cannot be punished for not advising patients about ending their pregnancies. The Health and Human Services Department, the state said, is illegally imposing conditions on funding that are not specified in the half-century-old nationwide family planning program known as Title X.
After the Supreme Court eliminated the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, Oklahoma was one of more than a dozen states to broadly prohibit the procedure. State law also makes it a crime for any person to try to persuade a woman to terminate a pregnancy or to procure an abortion for any woman.
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