They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.
Your OB-GYN could be one of them.
Marisa Endicott
June 4, 2020
In April 2019, when meetings like this still took place, Diane Foley took the stage in Indianapolis, looking out into the faces of anti-choice advocates and doctors who were gathered for their annual conference. The Health and Human Services official began her presentation: “Opportunities for Collaborative Engagement in Policy Development.” The bland, policy-wonkish title belied its almost-revolutionary substance: nothing less than a major shift in American health care—and a threat to the more than 4 million primarily low-income people who rely on a key government program for family planning and other care.
Title X, which Foley oversees as the head of the Office of Population Affairs—and which also includes the government’s teen pregnancy program—offers health care providers more than $286 million in funding each year. Just a month before her presentation, a new rule passed that would, for the first time, prohibit Title X recipients from performing abortions on-site or even providing abortion referrals. This effectively shut out a quarter of all clinics that were getting funding—including Planned Parenthood, which has traditionally received some $60 million a year from the program and provides more than 2.4 million patients with a slew of services, from birth control to cancer screenings to wellness exams.
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