Colorado 1st Congressional District U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, stepped back into the abortion debate last week with her praise for a new Obama administration regulation that forbids states from withholding federal family planning services from low-income persons.

DeGette said the regulation ensures “vital” health care for low-income women. DeGette is co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus.

Although the regulation ensures funding for health care providers of a variety of treatments and tests, the most controversial part refers to funds for Planned Parenthood affiliates that provide abortions.

The Obama administration claimed authority for the rule under Title X of the 1970 Public Health Service Act.

Title X is a grant program that encourages family planning and preventive health, primarily for low-income families. It is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“This updated regulation protects millions of people seeking access to these essential services,” DeGette said. “Given the intensifying attacks on women’s access to them at both the state and federal level in recent months, such protection is more important than ever.”

The regulation reinforces requirements that health care providers not be excluded from federal funding for reasons unrelated to their qualifications to perform services funded by Title X grants. The services include contraception and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, fertility, pregnancy care and breast and cervical cancer screening.

Supporters of the revised rule say they expect a tough struggle to keep it because of President-elect Donald Trump’s opposition to abortion. At one point during his campaign, he suggested that women who receive abortions should face criminal charges.

“But men in blue suits and red ties shouldn’t determine what women can and should do when it comes to their own health or bodies,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY.

The new regulation “will protect state health care providers from political attacks that could cripple their ability to provide life-saving and preventive health care services to millions of Americans,” Slaughter said.

In early October, DeGette, Slaughter and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-NJ, wrote to HHS Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell to express support for the Title X family planning program.

Their letter said at least 14 state legislatures have tried to exclude doctors from the Title X program if they are affiliated with institutions that provide abortions.

Last year, Title X’s network of health care providers served more than 4 million patients with family planning and other preventive health care services, the letter from the members of Congress said. The services included Pap tests, breast exams, HIV testing and contraception.

The abortion debate rages in Colorado as much as anywhere.

Last year, an anti-abortion activist shot and killed three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic.

He told police he hoped to be met in heaven by aborted fetuses who would thank him for saving the lives of unborn babies, according to court documents filed in the murder prosecution of Robert Dear Jr.

In a more recent case, a Boulder-based doctor who performs abortions is being investigated by a member of Congress for allegedly selling “baby parts.”

Dr. Warren Hern has being doing abortions at the Boulder Abortion Clinic for more than 40 years.

Recently, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who chairs the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, began investigating him. She demanded that he deliver medical records of abortions he performed to Congress.

Hern admitted turning over fetal tissue to laboratories for research, such as to determine the source of abnormalities found in some of his patients’ fetuses. He denied Blackburn’s allegations of selling human body parts.

Hern turned over the records she requested but he also responded with a letter to the congresswoman last month.

“Your clear and unabashed purpose is to obstruct women seeking abortions, to control their lives and to crush physicians who help them,” Hern wrote. “You are using the coercive power of the State to impose your own religious and partisan beliefs upon those who do not share them. This is the antithesis of American society and constitutional democracy.”

He predicted that government intolerance of abortion is likely to worsen under the Trump administration.

“You now have, with total Republican control of all three branches of the federal government, your Supreme Republican, Donald J. Trump, who has all the instincts and characteristics of a brutal fascist dictator,” Hern wrote.

The new Title X regulation is scheduled to take effect two days before Trump is sworn in as president Jan. 20.

He has supported some Planned Parenthood efforts, but not abortion. He also has said he would undo many of the Obama administration’s last-minute rules and regulations.

Similar concerns about legislative opposition to abortion prompted a warning from Clare Coleman, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

After praising the new Title X regulation, she said in a statement, “Congressional opponents have made clear their intentions to swiftly reverse all of the recent progress made for women’s health, including blocking these important protections. At a time when the stakes for women’s health could not be higher, the need for a robust family planning safety net has never been greater.”