While the FDA U.S. Supreme Court case captured the minds of pro-lifers and abortion supporters alike, one past case could have a profound impact on a new U.S. Supreme Court case.
The pro-life movement won a fantastic victory in the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo & Relentless, Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of Commerce case6 to 3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that Federal Agencies don’t get to act unilaterally as unaccountable experts. This was a massive blow to the long-standing Chevron deference, weaponized to support whatever policy an agency bureaucrat chooses to enforce.
With the legal slaying of Chevron, more good news for preborn lives may be coming next year. According to a new report from Vox, a Supreme Court case, Oklahoma v. Department of Health and Human Services, could further erode the federal government’s ability to abuse its power by challenging whether abortion services can be included in Title X.
Title X was enacted 1970 under the Public Health Service (PHS) Act. Its main and sole purpose was to create federal programs targeting family planning and related preventive health services. Seeing that abortion is killing a child in the womb and destroying families and women’s health, one would think that it should be excluded. However, the Biden-Harris Administration unsurprisingly thought otherwise.
“Taken seriously, Oklahoma’s proposed limit on federal agencies’ power would profoundly transform how many of the biggest and most consequential federal programs operate,” reported Vox. “As the Justice Department points out in its Oklahoma brief, ‘Medicare’s ‘Conditions of Participation’ for hospitals alone span some 48 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations.’ All of those rules, plus countless other federal regulations for Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs, could cease to function overnight if the justices accept Oklahoma’s more radical argument.”
This “radical” argument is a profound defense for the preborn – that money from Medicare, Medicaid, and other “family planning” government programs, funding meant to help create more families, can’t be used for the exact opposite purposes of killing a child in the womb. With Chevron knocked off its high horse, pro-life institutions, states, and others can start challenging the pre-existing standards put in place by unchecked government entities.
Pennsylvania Sen. Lankford discussed this with Students for Life Action (SFLAction) on the emergency webcast several months ago when we called on the GOP to be a part of Life.
However, even before Chevron met its demise, another Reagan-era U.S. Supreme Court case, Rust v. Sullivan (1991), upheld the Reagan Administration’s prohibition of any Title X grant recipients using funding for abortion counseling. According to Vox:
“Rust held that the federal statute governing Title X, which provides that ‘[n]one of the funds appropriated under this subchapter shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,’ does not speak to whether Title X programs may refer patients to other medical providers who do offer abortions. Thus, the law is ‘ambiguous’ regarding such referrals, and the Court concluded that the Reagan administration could resolve this ambiguity by banning abortion-related referrals.”
Hopefully, with this upcoming case, the ambiguity can be resolved and not be manipulated to push abortion on vulnerable women, as the Biden-Harris Administration is doing.
Given Chevron’s recent fall, we hope Oklahoma sees a victory and that agencies can’t push them around.
