DNC Chair Tom Perez and DNC Women’s Caucus Chair Lottie Shackelford released the following joint statement after the Trump administration issued a proposal to prevent family planning organizations and health care providers who offer abortion services or referrals from participating in the Title X program:

“This is a brazen and shameful assault on women, their rights, and their health. The Trump administration’s new rule would kneecap Title X – a program 4 million Americans each year rely on for affordable birth control and reproductive health care – threatening the health of millions of women and their families across the country. It would block patients from going to reproductive health care providers like Planned Parenthood for needed care, essentially “gag” health care providers by preventing doctors and nurses from referring their patients for safe and legal abortion, and allow doctors to withhold information from women about their own medical options. Make no mistake, this proposed rule is just the latest Trump administration attack on access to health care in America.
 

“We should be expanding access to preventive care, cancer screenings, STD testing, birth control, and family planning services. Instead, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are once again turning back the clock and telling women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Democrats will fight tooth and nail to protect a woman’s constitutional right to make decisions about her own reproductive health with her doctor.”