Cite as: 531 U. S. 533 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
in abortion advocacy and counseling in exchange for the subsidy. Id., at 196.
We upheld the law, reasoning that Congress had not discriminated against viewpoints on abortion, but had "merely chosen to fund one activity to the exclusion of the other." Id., at 193. The restrictions were considered necessary "to ensure that the limits of the federal program [were] observed." Ibid. Title X did not single out a particular idea for suppression because it was dangerous or disfavored; rather, Congress prohibited Title X doctors from counseling that was outside the scope of the project. Id., at 194-195.
The Court in Rust did not place explicit reliance on the rationale that the counseling activities of the doctors under Title X amounted to governmental speech; when interpreting the holding in later cases, however, we have explained Rust on this understanding. We have said that viewpoint-based funding decisions can be sustained in instances in which the government is itself the speaker, see Board of Regents of Univ. of Wis. System v. Southworth, 529 U. S. 217, 229, 235 (2000), or instances, like Rust, in which the government "used private speakers to transmit specific information pertaining to its own program." Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 833 (1995). As we said in Rosenberger, "[w]hen the government disburses public funds to private entities to convey a governmental message, it may take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message is neither garbled nor distorted by the grantee." Ibid. The latitude which may exist for restrictions on speech where the government's own message is being delivered flows in part from our observation that, "[w]hen the government speaks, for instance to promote its own policies or to advance a particular idea, it is, in the end, accountable to the electorate and the political process for its advocacy. If the citizenry objects, newly elected officials later could espouse some different or con-
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