We oppose the Department of Health and Human Services’ domestic Gag Rule undermining Title X, a critical federal program that has provided affordable reproductive and sexual health care to millions of low-income adults and teens across the country since 1970.

Title X has empowered millions of people to take control of their health and futures. The program supports the provision of affordable birth control, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment, and other preventive care to 23,000 Mainers each year, close to 80 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-fee services. The program is a driving force behind Maine’s low unintended pregnancy rates and our highest-in-the-nation rate of effective birth control use among people of reproductive age.

We share deep concerns about how the Gag Rule would sabotage health care access and outcomes in our state, particularly in rural, poor, and otherwise under-resourced communities where family planning clinics are often patients’ only source of health care. That is why we support Maine Family Planning — the state’s sole Title X grantee for nearly 50 years — in withdrawing from the Title X program. Complying with the Gag Rule would have placed basic reproductive care and family planning increasingly out of reach for poor, rural, under-insured, and uninsured individuals. Compliance would have led to safe and legal abortion care becoming practically inaccessible for anyone except those with the most resources.

We believe family planning is a urgent matter of public health and promoting healthy, economically secure families. We cannot sit idly by while the current federal administration dismantles a successful, bipartisan program that promotes healthy futures for us all. We must maintain the robust nature of our state’s family planning system, regardless of who is in the White House. That is why we the undersigned join Maine Family Planning in calling on the Mills administration to continue its excellent work in championing reproductive health access statewide by replacing the full amount of federal funding with state funds. We call on the Governor to invest in public health where others seek to divest, and to sustain a nearly 50-year legacy of high-quality sexual and reproductive care for Mainers regardless of income or geography.