State Joins Attack on Ban of Clinics’ Abortion Advice

Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp said Wednesday he has asked the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of California to hear a challenge to federal rules that prohibit federally funded family planning clinics from mentioning abortion or abortion providers.

Van de Kamp said his office accepted an invitation from the states of New York and Ohio to join a request to the high court attacking the regulations, enacted in February, 1988, under the Reagan Administration, as a violation of the rights of privacy and free speech.

Deputy Atty. Gen. M. Anne Jennings said the regulations ban any clinic receiving federal family planning funds from using money from any source in a program that mentions abortion as an option.

The clinics are also forbidden to refer women to health care providers who regularly perform abortions, and are required to provide a list of every local prenatal care provider that does not perform abortions, regardless of the clinic’s opinion of the provider’s competence, Jennings said.

She said Van de Kamp’s office views the regulations as an unauthorized expansion of a longstanding federal law that prohibited the direct use of federal funds to pay for abortions “as a method of family planning.”