New rule denies Planned Parenthood federal funds, but NJ wants to make up the difference

The New Jersey Legislature is hoping to provide close to $9 million in state funding to facilities like Planned Parenthood that are withdrawing from a federal funding program that helps subsidize reproductive health care and birth control services, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said Wednesday. 

New Jersey’s two Planned Parenthood chapters, Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey and Planned Parenthood of Northern, Central, and Southern New Jersey, officially withdrew from the Title X program this week as a result of a new rule that among other things prohibits Title X recipients from referring patients to other health care providers that offer abortions. 

In New Jersey, Planned Parenthood operates 22 health centers that received Title X funding, out of 45 facilities receiving the funding in the state. About 120 clinics statewide offer contraceptive services. 

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"This has huge ramifications. This is a serious decision that impacts the relationship between a health care provider and a patient," said U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-Mercer, at an event at a Planned Parenthood facility in Trenton. "Typically poor, women of color and even men are serviced by Planned Parenthood."

Planned Parenthood withdrew from the program so it won't have to "withhold critical information from our patients," said Kaitlyn Wojtowicz, the legislative and political director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey. The organization has been covering this loss of funding with emergency funds since June, and has been asking its donors for additional support in the meantime.

"Today our doors are open. Tomorrow our doors will be open. We will do everything that we can to make sure our patients get care," Wojtowicz said. 

Planned Parenthood provides health care services to 70 percent of the 100,000 Title X patients in New Jersey. 

New Jersey legislative leaders such as Sen. Troy Singleton and Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson emphasized their support for Planned Parenthood, and a patient of the clinic spoke about how budget crunches affected her ability to get health care. 

Mariel DiDato, 27, of Hazlet said that when she was 22, her method of birth control failed and she needed emergency contraception. She couldn’t afford Plan B at the pharmacy, so she drove five minutes to her local Planned Parenthood clinic, which she learned had shut down because of budget cuts, she said.

So she drove 40 minutes to an unfamiliar city to reach the next-closest clinic. She said that although this was an “inconvenience” for her, it would prevent people who do not own cars or can’t afford gas from receiving the health care services they need.

Sweeney said he hopes to start working on an appropriations bill in early September that would draw from the state's general fund. 

“I’m here to commit to you today on behalf of the Senate that we will get this done," Sweeney said. "I am 1,000 percent in support of funding these services for any group that withdraws."

Sweeney has not yet spoken with Gov. Phil Murphy, however, and the governor through a spokesman did not commit to the funding, as Sweeney strongly did.

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"The Murphy administration stands firm and proud in our support of women’s health and family planning services in New Jersey in the face of the Trump administration’s dangerous and unethical rule," press secretary Alyana Alfaro Post said in a statement. "We are working with partners in government and with providers, including the New Jersey Family Planning League and both Planned Parenthood affiliates that operate in New Jersey, to assess the need of the program and how the state might step in."

The New Jersey Family Planning League is the entity that directly applies to the United States Department of Health and Human Services for Title X funds. No other health care funding recipients have withdrawn from the program alongside Planned Parenthood, a representative of the league said. 

In Murphy's first bill signing as governor, he approved $7.5 million of state funding for family planning services, which former Republican Gov. Chris Christie vetoed each year he was governor. Murphy also expanded Medicaid services for family planning services. 

Planned Parenthood said it would officially drop out of Title X on Monday, when recipients of the national funding program — which doles out $286 million annually, with $8.8 million going to New Jersey — were required to turn in plans about how they would comply with the new rule. The new rule also halts funding to providers that perform abortions at the same location where they offer services covered by Title X, such as cancer screenings and birth control. 

Health care providers taking Title X money will have to submit proof they are making a "good faith effort" to follow the new rule by Sept. 18. 

New Jersey is one of nearly two dozen states that sued the Trump administration in March to block the changes, calling them “burdensome and unnecessary.”