The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to reinstate federal family planning funds for the state of Oklahoma. The move upholds the Biden administration’s decision to withhold $4.5 million due to the state’s refusal to provide abortion-related information.
Three conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented, indicating they would have granted Oklahoma’s request.
The Biden administration requires Title X grant recipients to provide non-directive counseling on prenatal care, adoption and abortion, including referral information if requested.
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Oklahoma’s abortion law criminalizes encouraging abortions, and state officials say the law prevents them from following federal requirements for providing abortion-related information.
The Department of Health and Human Services offered a compromise that allows Oklahoma to provide a third-party hotline number for abortion information, which the state rejected.
Oklahoma’s loss of approximately $4.5 million in federal funding affects the state’s ability to distribute funds to public health services and county health departments.
The state argued that depriving county health departments of Title X services would be devastating, especially for rural communities where government-run health facilities are often the only access points for critical preventative services.
