Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the rule changes would require costly changes to those clinics, like keeping Title X funded activities and abortion-related activities in separate buildings.
“Any entity that receives Title X funds and performs abortions has to have those two missions completely separate. Not just financially, the way it exists right now, but physically. So in terms of where to office is, and waiting rooms,” Neronha said. “And that is the kind of obstacle which makes it effectively impossible for an entity to do that, and I think that reduces the availability of those very important services to women here and across the country.”
And it would ban health care providers who receive the funding from discussing abortions with their patients, which Neronha said is a right protected by current law.
“I really feel like that is eliminating one of the choices that a woman has under not only Title X law but under the law of the land, Roe v. Wade and its progeny. And I think this rule is really intended to eliminate that choice from a woman.”
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Oregon, asks for an injunction to stop the rules from taking effect in 60 days. Neronha said that injunction would only apply to states that are parties to the lawsuit, which is part of the reason he signed on.
Also joining Oregon in the lawsuit are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. Planned Parenthood and the American Medical Association Tuesday filed a parallel lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Oregon. And California filed a separate, but related, lawsuit on Monday.
