The following is a Catholic Action League Press Release:
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today is criticizing a lower court judge for blocking the Trump Administration from restoring Ronald Reagan era reforms in the disbursement of Title X family planning dollars. U. S. District Court Judge Stanley A. Bastion—a Barack Obama appointee—issued a nation wide injunction yesterday barring the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services from implementing regulatory changes intended to bring federal funding formulas into full compliance with Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970.
That legislation states “None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” The regulatory revisions would have revived the Reagan Administration’s prohibition against abortion referrals and would have mandated a physical and financial separation between so-called family planning services and facilities which perform abortions.
The new regulations, which were to take effect on May 3rd, would have stripped nearly $60 million from the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The Catholic Action League is calling the judge’s decision “more unconstitutional overreach by a partisan, politicized and ideologically invested judiciary.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “Stanley Bastion’s decision contravenes a 1991 ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court, which in Rust v. Sullivan, upheld the right of the Reagan Administration to enact the very same compliance integrity measures prescribed by the Trump Administration.”
“When the First Congress passed, and President George Washington signed into law, the Judiciary Act of 1789, establishing the federal court system, no one envisioned national government by lower court injunction. For all his legal misdirection, Bastion makes clear in his decision that he objects to the new regulations as a matter of public policy.”
“Bastion’s ruling is an abuse of office, a violation of the separation of powers, and a usurpation of the right of the elected executive branch to enforce the law. Reduced to its essentials, the key fact of this ruling is that a judicial appointee of America’s most pro-abortion President has misappropriated his authority to compel taxpayers to continue subsidizing Planned Parenthood.”
