Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, said the decision would greatly assist the agency’s work not only in family planning, but in other health services for women and girls in poor countries.
“We now have the support of a very important member state,” said Dr. Kanem in a telephone interview.
The rule has been on a philosophical seesaw for decades – in effect when a Republican occupies the White House and overthrown when a Democrat moves into it.
Mr. Biden also instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to “as soon as possible consider suspending, reviewing or terminating” the so-called domestic gag rule – a collection of regulations imposed by the Trump administration that ban federally funded clinics family planning counseling patients about abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute, which monitors access to abortion, wrote last year that the rules
cut the “capacity of patients in the national family planning network in half, impairing the care of 1.6 million female patients across the country” The presidential guideline practically guarantees that the health department will reverse these rules, although this may take months.
The president’s order will also guide federal agencies to review policies, including exemptions granted to states, which discourage participation in Medicaid, the public health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Medicaid enrollment numbers grew substantially during the pandemic, partly because people who lost their jobs and health insurance turned to it.
The Trump administration has approved exemptions in 12 states that would require certain Medicaid beneficiaries to work a minimum number of hours a week or risk losing their benefits. Four of those pilot programs have already been overturned by the courts, and the Biden government has the authority to end all of them, although the Trump administration has taken steps to hinder the process in recent weeks.
Another exemption, completed this month in Tennessee, would give that state fixed financing – or a block grant – to cover its Medicaid population, while loosening many of the rules on how the program is run. This waiver can also be canceled.