Anti-Birth Control Group Reportedly Lied To Get Government Funding
By: Natalie Gontcharova, Refinery29, May 19, 2019
The anti-abortion group Obria received Title X funding from the government despite promising “to never provide hormonal contraception nor abortion,” in the words of its founder and CEO Kathleen Bravo, according to a new report by the Campaign for Accountability.
The group recently got a $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Title X funds, which are meant to provide family-planning services. According to the Campaign for Accountability report, in a funding application for Texas, Obria said that its clinics would provide a “broad range of family-planning methods, including several contraception options,” despite telling its supporters it wouldn’t do so. While that grant was rejected, Obria got Title X funding for California.
This is part of a pattern, says Alice Huling, counsel at Campaign for Accountability.
“We’ve seen multiple attempts by HHS to kind of mutate what Title X is supposed to be doing and the services they’re supposed to be providing,” Huling told Refinery29. “But Congress didn’t allocate this funding to Title X for that — so they shouldn’t be receiving that funding. Title X has been critical for people to access care and family-planning, and if that money is going to organizations that aren’t providing that care, it’s problematic that those organizations are being funded.”
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Campaign for Accountability has launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s relationship with Obria. The Trump administration is trying to dismantle Title X, a program that serves about 4 million people a year and provides free and affordable reproductive healthcare to those who need it most, by prohibiting taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from discussing abortion with patients or referring them to abortion providers. A federal judge recently blocked this so-called Title X “gag rule,” which was set to take effect on May 3.