The victory is especially important, pro-life groups tell NR, because it comes after a series of setbacks following the overturning of Roe.
Pro-life activists have spent the past few months lobbying Republican lawmakers behind the scenes to defund Planned Parenthood in this year’s reconciliation bill. Now that a legislative provision doing exactly that finally cleared the House last month, anti-abortion groups are optimistic they’re on the cusp of a historic victory as the bill heads to the GOP-controlled Senate.
The House-passed legislative language is “a very good step in the right direction,” says Lila Rose, president and founder of the pro-life group Live Action. “Obviously the goal of the pro-life movement is complete legal protection for the preborn. So, these are just steps forward.”
Defunding Planned Parenthood would be an especially welcome victory for pro-life activists after the challenging political moment they inherited in June 2022 following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which unleashed a wave of pro-choice-funded efforts codifying the right to abortion in states like Ohio and Michigan and defeating pro-life ballot initiatives in ruby-red states like Kentucky and Kansas.
“In many ways, the overturning of Roe was year one of the new pro-life movement, and there was no way to fully prepare for all that would bring,” says Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for political affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for the pro-life movement, she says. “Now what you’re seeing is an organized, unified pro-life movement that has been working together to defund Planned Parenthood and big abortion.”
After clearing the House, pro-life groups are hoping the legislative language will pass its next test in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is expected to make its own tweaks on the bill in the coming days.
While the Hyde Amendment prohibits federally funded abortion except for in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening circumstances for the mother, family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood receive hundreds of millions each year in Medicaid reimbursements for the non-abortion services they provide, such as cancer screenings, pap smears, mammograms, and STI testing. Pro-life groups say that reimbursing these organizations even for non-abortion related tests and procedures props up the abortion industry.
This year’s House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes a provision that prohibits during the ten-year period following enactment any Medicaid reimbursements to any “essential community provider” that are primarily engaged in family planning services or reproductive services” and that received more than $1 million in federal and state Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2024. While Planned Parenthood is not name-checked in the legislation, the new bill describes any center that falls under this description as a “prohibited entity,” and includes any affiliates like clinics and subsidiaries.
There are exceptions in the bill for centers that provide abortions in the cases of rape, incest, or in circumstances where the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.
“We’re happy with the language, and happy that it doesn’t just apply to Planned Parenthood, but it applies to any abortion business that gets Medicaid funding,” added Pritchard. “There are a number of other entities out there that aren’t as loud as Planned Parenthood — don’t put out this huge annual report like Planned Parenthood does — but it’s just as important that we stop propping up their business of death and harm to women.”
Congressional Democrats are naturally incensed by the effort. Pressed last month about Republicans’ quest to defund family planning organizations in this year’s reconciliation bill, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) told NR that “no one is saving money by keeping people from getting the health care they need, and that includes the health care related to having babies. . . . What’s wrong with these people?”
While some moderate Republicans expressed worries about the prospect of defunding Planned Parenthood in the lead-up to the House vote, the bill ended up clearing the chamber anyway. Pritchard says that’s a testament to the popularity of the effort – which she is optimistic will soon clear the Senate.
“It’s not even just popular amongst pro-lifers,” Pritchard added. “It’s popular amongst Republicans, broadly, even those who haven’t perhaps been as bold on the issue as we would have liked immediately after the overturn of Roe.”
Conservative pro-life organizations are also ecstatic about another provision in the bill that prohibits Medicaid reimbursements for children and adults seeking gender-transition medical treatment, including hormonal treatments, puberty blockers, and any “plastic, cosmetic, or aesthetic surgery that feminizes or masculinizes the facial or other body features of an individual.” The legislation includes some Medicaid reimbursement exceptions, such as for children undergoing precocious puberty or procedures for medically verifiable sex development disorders.
This gender-transition provision is another blow against abortion-access groups like Planned Parenthood, which has emerged as the country’s leading provider of cross-sex hormones for young people, according to a recent Free Press investigation.
While defunding Planned Parenthood would mark a historic victory for conservatives, pro-life activists have a long way to go to build up their fundraising capabilities and electoral infrastructure to better compete with their pro-choice counterparts.
“Planned Parenthood is over 100 years old, and they have been at this from day one,” says Live Action president Lila Rose. “We have to grow and professionalize more as a movement so we can respond to those attacks and to the misinformation that’s out there.”
And pro-choice groups are already taking conservatives to task on the advertising and messaging front. If Senate Republicans preserve the legislative provision as is and the bill makes it to Trump’s desk, expect Democrats and pro-choice groups to spend the entire 2026 midterm cycle characterizing the legislation as an effort to strip low-income women of health care like cancer screenings.
“What does this all mean?” Planned Parenthood wrote in a press release on May 22, the same day the bill cleared the House. “It means that House Republicans did their level best to make sure that cancers will go undetected, STIs will go untreated, birth control will be harder to get, and 1.1 million patients across the country could lose access to the care they need.”