Rust v. Sullivan

Congress's 1970 Title X of the Public Health Service Act funded family-planning services but barred using those funds in programs treating abortion as a method of family planning. In 1988, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sullivan (defendant) issued regulations barring Title X projects from counseling or referring for abortion as family planning, from encouraging or promoting abortion, and requiring physical and financial separation from any prohibited abortion activities. Rust and other Title X grantees and supervising doctors (plaintiffs) sued before the regulations took effect, seeking to enjoin their implementation as unconstitutional; the district court upheld the regulations, and the court of appeals affirmed.