COLUMBUS – Ohio’s top lawyer has filed suit against the Biden administration seeking to restore a Trump-era ban on abortion referrals by family planning clinics that was reversed earlier this month.
The action by Republican Attorney Dave Yost was joined by 11 other states.
It says new federal regulations at the Department of Health and Human Services that return the Title X federal family planning program to the way it ran under the Obama administration prevents states from determining violations of a federal prohibition on clinics using taxpayer money for abortions.
“You can’t ‘follow the money’ when all the money is dumped into one pot and mixed together. Federal law prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion — and that law means nothing if the federal money isn’t kept separate. That, frankly, is the real reason behind the rule,” Yost said.
Former President Donald Trump set the ban in 2019.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court for the Southern District of Ohio, does not challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that established the right of women to obtain abortions.
Instead, Yost says it seeks to reinstate the 2019 rule changes that required federally funded family-planning clinics to be independent of abortion clinics and prohibited them from referring patients for abortions.