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.
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.
