The Trump administration will move forward with its plans to defund Planned Parenthood after the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted two preliminary injunctions that aimed to hamper the tax dollar withdrawal.
Republicans in Congress first moved to defund Planned Parenthood earlier this year via a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill. Shortly after a tiebreaker vote sent the legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law in July, Planned Parenthood sued the administration. The abortion giant claimed the cessation of federal funding was “unlawful” and would put nearly 200 Planned Parenthood facilities at risk of closure.
On July 21, a district court, led by a Democrat-nominated federal judge, demanded that the administration halt from “enforcing, retroactively enforcing, or otherwise applying” the policy designed to strip Planned Parenthood’s stream of taxpayer dollars for one year. The court also ordered the administration to “take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed in the customary manner and time frames to Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and other Planned Parenthood Federation of America [m]embers.”
In a second preliminary injunction issued less than a week later on July 28, the district court expanded the order beyond Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. to include Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and “all other members” of the abortion giant’s network.
The court order, posted on Thursday, however, declared that Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had adequately demonstrated their “entitlement to a stay” and need not heed the injunctions any longer.
The greenlight means the nearly $800 million in taxpayer funds collected by Planned Parenthood during the 2023-2024 period, in which Planned Parenthood performed a record number of abortions, will no longer be available to the abortion business.
Historically, Planned Parenthood’s steady stream of taxpayer funding sustained its widespread effort to end unborn lives (or botching its attempts to do so), allegedly flout federal law and waste tax dollars, dispense castrating drugs to confused minors, reportedly traffic baby body parts, enable abusers, allegedly perform unlicensed procedures and violate health and safety standards, oppose free speech, and allegedly conducting procedures that have resulted in mothers’ deaths.
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser celebrated the court’s slap down of “Big Abortion’s desperate money grab.”
“The American people, through Congress, spoke clearly with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Taxpayers should not be forced to spend a dime funding a brutal industry that ends at least 1.1 million lives a year, harms women while providing dwindling, substandard health care services, and engages in partisan political activism – especially when more accessible, more comprehensive options outnumber Planned Parenthoods 15 to 1,” Dannefelser said in a statement. “We are confident the Trump administration will prevail against the abortion industry’s lawfare.”