Anti-abortion activist demonstration
Credit: Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters

In the past few months, the Department of Health and Human Services has steadily picked away at the Obama administration’s carefully constructed family planning policy.

Incrementally, the Trump administration is cutting Obama-era grant specifications and replacing them with language that benefits “faith-based organizations,” abstinence-oriented programs, and “natural” family planning methods that don’t involve hormonal or chemical contraceptives.

These changes themselves are subtle, but could end up having massive funding implications for health care organizations across the country.

It is no secret that the Trump administration is stacked with advocates of socially conservative family planning beliefs. Just last week, at an event celebrating the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List, Vice President Mike Pence told attendees that Trump was the “most pro-life president in American history” and he believes there have been more anti-abortion measures taken “in the last year … than I have seen in public policy in all of my years.”

But because many of these policy changes were accomplished through small language tweaks, the aggregate effect has […]