[from AMA Advocacy Update]

“This is madness,” wrote U.S. District Judge Michael McShane in Portland, Oregon, in a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s new Title X regulations that includes a gag rule dictating what physicians must and must not say to their patients in the Title X program about family planning.

“The gag rule prevents doctors from behaving like informed professionals,” McShane wrote. “At the heart of this rule is the arrogant assumption that government is better suited to direct the health care of women than their medical providers.”

McShane’s ruling detailed how the regulations would violate the AMA Code of Medical Ethics, damage public health and state economies with it, and violate provisions of the Affordable Care Act and Administrative Procedure Act without explaining what problem the new regulations seek to address.

The Oregon lawsuit was led by the AMA, Planned Parenthood and its local affiliates, and the Oregon Medical Association, but the case was consolidated with another lawsuit and the ruling covers the plaintiffs in both cases. That includes 20 states, the District of Columbia and individual health professionals.

McShane said a nationwide ban was appropriate because Planned Parenthood operates in 48 states, AMA members reside in all 50 states, AMA members provide counseling to pregnant women served by the Title X program, and that there was “ample evidence” of potential harm to public health across the nation.