Kenneth P. Vogel and Robert Pear

The grant from the Department of Health and Human Services went to the Obria Group, a Southern California-based nonprofit that describes itself as being “led by God” and that aims to siphon patients — and money — from Planned Parenthood.

The grant to Obria, which includes $1.7 million in the first year and the prospect of that amount in each of the next two years, represents a fraction of the total amount of family planning money awarded by the department Friday. But both supporters and opponents of abortion rights cast it as a potentially significant move to try to defund medical clinics that provide abortions, such as those affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

The funding comes from Title X, which subsidizes birth control, cancer screenings and other medical care for 4 million low-income patients. While Title X funds do not pay for abortion services as a method of family planning, affiliates of Planned Parenthood, which receive a significant portion of the program’s funds, perform abortions using other funds.

Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services has introduced changes to the program to make it more difficult for clinics that offer abortions to qualify for the funds and, conversely, to make it easier to provide money to faith-based organizations like Obria that oppose abortion rights and certain forms of contraception.

Supporters of abortion rights and contraception have been scrambling to block the changes. Planned Parenthood and states governed by Democrats filed lawsuits this month challenging them, and advocacy groups called for investigations into claims of favoritism toward faith-based organizations and warned that the shift could deprive thousands of at-risk women of critical health care.

The changes to the Title X program and the grant to Obria are part of a broader strategy by the administration and some Republican state officials to use government regulations — and funding — to limit access to abortion and some forms of contraception.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/us/politics/trump-grant-abortion.html" id="d663d7fa-d589-3bfc-ae65-6bd040056a74">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took an important step Friday in its push to restrict access to abortion and contraception, announcing that it would give as much as $5.1 million in family planning funds to a nonprofit organization funded by allies of the Catholic Church.

Trump Administration Gives Family Planning Grant to Anti-Abortion Group

Under President Donald Trump, however, the Department of Health and Human Services has introduced changes to the program to make it more difficult for clinics that offer abortions to qualify for the funds and, conversely, to make it easier to provide money to faith-based organizations like Obria that oppose abortion rights and certain forms of contraception.

The Title X changes and the grant to Obria suggest that the Trump administration is “more interested in courting religious ideologues than in providing real health care to low-income Americans,” said Alice Huling, counsel for a liberal watchdog group called the Campaign for Accountability, which this month sued the administration seeking Obria’s communications with the Department of Health and Human Services.

Tim Head, president of the conservative advocacy group Faith &amp; Freedom Coalition, said the grant was a victory for opponents of abortion rights.

“For decades, multiple Congresses and presidential administrations, the pro-life movement has fought to at least slow federal tax subsidies for abortion providers but has failed to do so — until now,” Head said.

The efforts have endeared Trump to social conservatives. He once supported abortion rights and described himself as “very pro-choice,” but as a candidate in 2016 he embraced an anti-abortion stance, winning wide support from religious conservatives, upon whom he will be banking again in his 2020 re-election bid.

Under Trump, employers have been given expanded ability to claim religious or moral objections to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that they offer employees insurance coverage for contraception. And the administration has tried to make it more difficult for groups that provide abortions — such as Planned Parenthood — to continue receiving federal family planning funds for other services.

Instead, the Trump administration and some Republican-controlled state governments have worked to direct money to programs including teenage pregnancy prevention programs that emphasize sexual abstinence and crisis pregnancy centers, which offer medical services including ultrasounds, prenatal care, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, while steering women away from abortion and hormonal birth control.

Overseeing this change are people who worked for groups that oppose abortion rights, who have been appointed to key health department positions with oversight of Title X grants. Some of those officials have appeared to advise Obria about federal programs, according to emails submitted in lawsuits challenging the Title X changes.

The grants announced Friday will dispense $256 million for the fiscal year that begins Monday, with $1.7 million going to Obria. The group said in a statement it would receive $5.1 million over the course of three years to expand services in four California counties.

“With this grant, the administration has opened up a new avenue of health care choices for low income and underserved women and their families in California,” Kathleen Eaton Bravo, the founder and chief executive of Obria, said in the statement.

The group, which is at the fore of the faith-based push for Title X funding, was created in the 1990s as Birth Choice Pregnancy Centers, a volunteer-run nonprofit group that until recent years ran just a few crisis pregnancy centers in Southern California.

Obria gradually added doctors, nurses and medical services, and its locations got licensed as medical clinics, allowing them to collect payments from Medicaid and private insurance companies and to qualify for some government grants. The group started expanding beyond California by recruiting crisis pregnancy centers as partners in a fledgling nationwide network.

The two nonprofit groups that make up Obria — Obria Medical Clinics and Obria Group — had relatively modest fundraising until recently, bringing in more than $25 million over the last two decades, according to public tax filings. Those filings mostly do not identify the groups’ donors, which are not required to be publicly disclosed under the tax code.

But a pair of tax filings identified by the Campaign for Accountability include donor information, perhaps accidentally. The filings show millions of dollars of support from groups associated with the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion and many forms of contraception.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which comprises the country’s Catholic leadership, donated $2.5 million, according to the filings and the conference. And the Roman Catholic Bishop of Orange, which is affiliated with the Catholic diocese in California’s Orange County, donated another $560,000. A spokeswoman said the money came from the sale of roses on Mother’s Day.

Other donors include wealthy Southern California social conservatives, such as real estate investor Charles J. Schreiber Jr., who for a time was chairman of the board of Obria. He and his wife have contributed more than $1.1 million to the group.

Among the members of its national advisory board is Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which lobbies against abortion rights.

She has praised Trump as “the most pro-life president in our nation’s history.”

Trump administration gives family planning grant to anti-abortion group

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took an important step on Friday in its push to restrict access to abortion and contraception, announcing that it would give as much as $5.1 million in family planning funds to a nonprofit organization funded by allies of the Catholic Church.

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Kenneth P. Vogel and Robert Pear

Articles written by the author

Trump Administration Gives Family Planning Grant to Anti-Abortion Group

Trump administration gives family planning grant to anti-abortion group