NCJ Number
116748
Journal
Stanford Law Review Volume: 41 Issue: 2 Dated: (January 1989) Pages: 401-434
Date Published
1989
Length
34 pages
Annotation
Regulations promulgated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services effectively prevent any Title X recipient family planning clinic from providing abortion counseling or referral; this 'Gag Rule' imposes an unconstitutional condition upon the clinics.
Abstract
The long line of abortion funding cases shows how the Gag Rule also violates the constitutional rights of women to reproductive freedom. Of most obvious relevance is Harris v. McRae, which established that the government is not obliged to fund abortion simply because the right to abortion is constitutionally guaranteed, but it prohibited the government from placing obstacles in the path of a woman's reproductive choice. The Gag Rule, if imposed as a universal requirement, would be such an obstacle. It is not a universal restriction on abortion speech, however; rather the government restricts funding to those clinics that deny their patients abortion information. Still, although the clinics may be free to choose whether or not to accept government funding under such conditions, the women clients are given no such choice when they unsuspectingly walk into the only clinic they can afford and receive biased, government-funded misinformation. To these clients it is irrelevant whether the cause of the misinformation is conditional funding or direct censorship. Such manipulation of third parties' rights through government-funded restricted speech is unconstitutional. 195 footnotes.