WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – 159 members of Congress have signed a letter renewing calls for the Trump administration to reinstate the most consequential pro-life funding measure of President Donald Trump’s first term, to more thoroughly keep federal dollars from the abortion industry.

The Protect Life Rule required “clear financial and physical separation between Title X-funded projects and programs or facilities where abortion is a method of family planning” and banned “referral for abortion as a method of family planning.” It reduced Planned Parenthood’s annual funding by almost $60 million, and disqualified the abortion giant from any Title X for which it would have otherwise qualified.

The rule has yet to be restored in Trump’s second term, so on May 28, Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker and Reps. Trent Kelly and Michael Guest (all Republicans from Mississippi) led a new letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urging the administration to restore the rule.

The Protect Life Rule “appropriately eliminated the egregious abortion referral mandate, which protected the conscience rights of health care providers and increased the potential for diversity among program applicants. Furthermore, it stipulated that Title X projects had to be organized with complete physical and financial separation between a grantee’s Title X activities and abortion activities,” the lawmakers write. 

“This much-needed reform ended the practice of ‘co-location,’ which had made federal funds vulnerable to misuse and implied that abortion was a method of family planning,” the letter explains. “The Protect Life Rule also implemented a stronger focus on protecting women and children from being victimized by abuse, rape, incest, and trafficking by bolstering oversight of grantee compliance with state abuse reporting requirements.”

“History confirms that without the Protect Life Rule, Title X serves as a funding stream for the abortion industry,” they continue. “For example, between 2013 and 2015, Title X funds made up over $170 million of Planned Parenthood’s expenditures. Restoring these critical reforms is not without precedent; regulations requiring the physical separation of abortion activities and prohibiting abortion referrals were promulgated under President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1991. It is time to restore the bright line of separation between family planning and abortion that is consistent with the plain text of the statute and Congressional intent.”

The absence of the Protect Life Rule has exacerbated tensions between pro-lifers and the administration. In April, HHS renewed Biden-era Title X grants to Planned Parenthood for one more year, after failing to sustain a freeze on grants to organizations suspected of not complying with the administration’s executive orders against involvement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. They claim they were bound by law to do so, but stressed this would be the final year. The issue would likely have been rendered moot had Planned Parenthood’s abortion involvement rendered them ineligible regardless of its DEI activities.

Overall, cutting off federal funds to the abortion industry is the issue on which Trump’s second term most closely resembles the pro-life record of his first. Last July, Trump signed into law his controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (BBB), a wide-ranging policy package that included a one-year ban on federal tax dollars going through Medicaid to entities that commit abortions for reasons other than rape, incest, or supposed threats to the mother’s life.

But that provision is slated to expire next month, spurring pro-life calls to at the very least renew it, if not enhance it with more lasting language.

The White House’s budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year contains numerous pro-life provisions, but White House budget proposals are not binding, and actual budgets typically end up falling far short after working their way through Congress. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson reportedly ruled out including a renewal of Planned Parenthood’s aforementioned defunding in the most recent reconciliation bill, in the interest of passing a simple renewal of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and, with it, the president’s deportation agenda. However, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) says Johnson is “doing everything he can to make sure” Planned Parenthood remains defunded by the July 4 deadline.

On April 22, a coalition of 40 pro-life leaders sent a letter calling on Congress to renew the defunding not for another year, but for another ten. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has already introduced an amendment to the latest Senate Budget Resolution, which would extend the ban through 2035.

To end the cycle of uncertainty of having to periodically fight for temporary defunding measures at regular budget intervals, pro-lifers have also called for new standalone laws to fully and permanently defund the abortion industry: the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which permanently bans federal funds from being used for abortion; and the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which disqualifies Planned Parenthood and its affiliates specifically. But they would require 60 votes to make it through the Senate.