Despite Supreme Court loss, Planned Parenthood wants Medicaid funding restored

Despite a recent Supreme Court decision allowing states to defund abortion-providing entities from Medicaid, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic has updated its legal challenge in an attempt to preserve the Medicaid funding it received from South Carolina.

Key Takeaways:

• Planned Parenthood South Atlantic has updated its legal challenge to the constitutionality of South Carolina’s executive order preventing the abortion giant from receiving state Medicaid funding.

• The amended filing comes on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood.

The Backstory:

In 2018, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order prohibiting any clinic that commits abortions from participating in the state’s Medicaid reimbursement program. A Medicaid patient filed a lawsuit along with Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT), arguing that federal law allows Medicaid patients to get care from any qualified provider of their choice. In July, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, stating that individual Medicaid patients cannot sue to enforce their right to choose a provider.

This allowed South Carolina to strip Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funding.

“States are now free to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect taxpayer dollars to real, life-affirming care,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a pro-life legal group that represented the director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in the case, wrote on X.

At the time of the Supreme Court’s decision, ADF further stated:

The high court’s ruling means that the state can direct Medicaid funding—funds intended to help low-income individuals obtain necessary medical assistance—to comprehensive health care rather than entities that exist primarily to perform abortions.

The U.S. government, 18 states, numerous members of Congress, various medical practitioners in South Carolina, and multiple pro-life advocates submitted friend-of-the-court briefs with the high court supporting South Carolina’s freedom to direct Medicaid funding away from abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood and toward real, comprehensive healthcare for its citizens.

What’s Happening:

Following that decision, PPSAT filed an amended complaint that challenges the constitutionality of the executive order and asks a federal judge to allow PPSAT to receive Medicaid funds. It also challenges budget riders passed by the South Carolina General Assembly that would prevent federal funds from going to PPSAT.

“This case is about Planned Parenthood’s provision of essential health care services, other than abortion, to its patients in South Carolina,” the complaint states, claiming that prohibiting the abortion giant from receiving state Medicaid funds “will have a devastating impact on its ability to provide a wide range of non-abortion health care.”

Brandon Charochak, a spokesman for McMaster, told The Hill that the Supreme Court “has made clear that South Carolina has the right to exclude abortion providers from our Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood’s latest filing is nothing more than a desperate, last-gasp attempt to relitigate an issue that has already been decided.”

Why It Matters:

States and pro-life groups have argued that funneling money to businesses that commit abortions along with providing legitimate health services still supports the business of abortion due to the concept of fungibility. Essentially, since the same entity provides legitimate health care services using the same employees, facilities, etc., that are used for the abortion side of the business, any money provided to that entity for legitimate health care is also supporting the business of abortion.

As Live Action Research Fellow Carole Novielli noted for Live Action News in 2017:

In other words, as long as the abortion corporation keeps the equivalent of two ledgers, your tax dollars can be used to pay for the same staffers that also help with and/or commit abortions.

Prorated salaries, same facilities, same staff, same waiting rooms and counselors — and we are supposed to believe that our tax dollars are not funding abortion?

This is insane logic.

What would happen if tomorrow the federal government sent half a billion dollars to the Ku Klux Klan for subsidies to “help the poor” so long as they “separated their funds” from the group’s racist activities?

Would anyone buy the convoluted explanation that taxpayers aren’t funding racism, as long as the KKK separates the money into two piles? Of course not.

Neither should the American taxpayer believe that their government dollars aren’t paying for abortions.

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