The Republican reconciliation bill that President Donald Trump signed on July 4 accomplishes a goal that anti-abortion advocates have been trying to tackle for decades: defunding Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.
Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion advocates secured a big victory in the form of a provision that will block federal funding for abortion providers that receive government reimbursements for non-abortion services. The bill prohibits Medicaid dollars from going toward any health clinic for any service or treatment if the facility provides elective abortions.
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But anti-abortion Republicans did not achieve all of their goals. The Medicaid defunding time frame was shortened from 10 years in the House bill to only one year under the Senate’s version, which passed.
Republicans also originally hoped to prohibit cost-sharing reductions for Obamacare marketplace insurance plans that covered abortion, but Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough nixed that provision.
Kelsey Pritchard, policy director for the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, told the Washington Examiner ahead of the bill’s passage that this is the “biggest federal legislative victory since the Hyde Amendment,” which was passed in 1976 and prohibited federal dollars from being spent on elective abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.
Planned Parenthood’s annual fiscal report for 2023 says its affiliate centers received more than $792 million in government reimbursements and grants, roughly 44% of its total operating budget. The annual report showed that Planned Parenthood performed more than 402,000 of the over 1 million abortions in the United States in 2024.
Fungibility of money
Anti-abortion advocates argue that, even though the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funding from directly subsidizing abortion, any money given to abortion providers indirectly pays for abortions by freeing funds they gained by other means.
Noah Brandt, vice president of communications for the anti-abortion group Live Action, told the Washington Examiner that he expects to see “appreciably less abortions by defunding Planned Parenthood.”
“Money is fungible, so they’re getting a billion dollars that allows them to spend it on any of their priorities, or allows them to spend money they would have otherwise had to raise or been given to do those other really pernicious things,” Brandt said.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said during her press conference with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last month that the defunding Planned Parenthood language is tantamount to “a backdoor abortion ban.”
“Our opponents keep saying their own goal is only to avoid subsidizing abortion care, but the truth is, federal dollars already don’t cover abortion care except in some very specific, very rare circumstances,” Johnson said, adding that the GOP’s “real goal is to make it hard for everyone to get an abortion.”
Roughly 200 Planned Parenthood centers are slated to close in the wake of the bill’s passage. Anti-abortion advocates highlight that family health centers that receive federal support already outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics by 15 to 1 nationwide.
Decadeslong rallying cry
During the first Trump administration, Republicans in the House and Senate included a provision to prohibit federal Medicaid dollars from going toward Planned Parenthood in the 2017 budget reconciliation bill as part of the GOP’s efforts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
At the eleventh hour in 2017, the defunding language in the so-called “skinny repeal” of Obamacare survived the rule unscathed, but the whole bill was killed by the faithful vote of the late GOP Sen. John McCain.
Long before the “defund Planned Parenthood” push in 2017, Republicans had been trying to prevent federal and state taxpayer dollars from going toward abortion providers, since the late 1970s.
In 1979, Minnesota was the first state to pass a law ending state family planning funding for groups offering abortions or counseling and referrals for abortions. A federal judge struck down the law in 1980.
In 2001, then-Rep. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, introduced for the first time an amendment to an appropriations bill barring abortion clinics from receiving Title X family planning dollars. The effort failed. In 2007, Vitter, this time as a senator, alongside then-Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, reintroduced the amendment, which also failed.
Republicans in the House successfully passed a measure in the 2011 budget reconciliation process to eliminate all federal funding, including Title X and Medicaid dollars, for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. The debate over the controversial measure in the omnibus bill almost led to a government shutdown, but the measure died in the Senate.
In 2015, following the release of videos accusing Planned Parenthood of profiting from the sale of aborted fetal organs, the Senate failed to overcome the filibuster for a stand-alone bill to defund the major abortion provider.
The sting videos played a role in the GOP primaries for the 2016 presidential election. GOP candidates Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry each made it a feature of their ill-fated campaigns that they successfully blocked Planned Parenthood funding in their respective states.
Gamechangers: Dobbs and transgender medicine
Several anti-abortion advocates told the Washington Examiner that the current effort to defund Planned Parenthood would not have been possible without the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned federal abortion protections.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said that both Roe and Planned Parenthood were always assumed to be “indestructible.”
“Planned Parenthood was teflon, and the political juggernaut that the abortion lobby was also indestructible, just as Roe was,” Dannenfelser said. “We know now that this is untrue.”
Opponents of Planned Parenthood also cited that centrist Republicans who are not stalwartly anti-abortion have supported the defunding effort because of the abortion provider’s role in providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors over age 16, in some cases without parental consent.
“The fact that Planned Parenthood has been a huge part of pushing minors to transition and get these procedures, get these hormones, I think that’s a huge role,” Anthony LaBruna, executive director of the American Principles Project, told the Washington Examiner.
LaBruna’s American Principles Project has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s push to prohibit medical treatments for minors with gender dysphoria. He says that transgender medicalization of minors has overwhelming support from the public, upward of 80%, whereas abortion itself is still roughly evenly split.
Brandt from Live Action, which is primarily an anti-abortion group, said their approach to advocacy for defunding Planned Parenthood has been multifaceted to gain support from Republicans on the fence.
“However, we do it, we want to get Planned Parenthood refunded,” Brandt said.
The fight, however, may be far from over. Shortly after the bill was signed, Planned Parenthood announced its intention to sue.
“The reconciliation bill is a targeted attack on Planned Parenthood health centers and patients that cannot stand,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.
“Everyone deserves access to high-quality, affordable health care. That’s what we’ve been fighting for the last century — and we’ll never stop. We’ll be suing the Trump administration to stop this unlawful attack. See you in court.”