Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over planned cuts to health center funding in President Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts and spending package.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts named Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as a defendant. It centers on a provision that would bar Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving Medicaid reimbursements. Trump signed the bill containing the prohibition into law on July 4 and left the nonprofit fearing “devastating consequences nationwide.”
Planned Parenthood sees more than 2 million patients each year at nearly 600 locations across the United States. Their health centers provide abortion care, but also contraception, cancer screenings, treatment for sexually transmitted infections and gender-affirming hormone therapy. According to the lawsuit, more than 50 percent of Planned Parenthood patients rely on Medicaid to access their services.
“There is no legitimate justification for the statute; rather, the true design of the Defund Provision is simply to express disapproval of, attack and punish Planned Parenthood, which plays a particularly prominent role in the public debate over abortion,” the lawsuit reads.
Federal funds can not be used to fund abortion services in all but the most dire circumstances. The Hyde Amendment has barred Planned Parenthood from and other clinics from using Medicaid funds to provide abortions for nearly half a century. Planned Parenthood uses Medicaid funding to provide other health services to low-income patients. The nonprofit sees the one-year funding pause as an indirect way of shuttering their clinics by anti-abortion conservatives. In their suit, they noted that the conditions of the provision apply almost exclusively to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood estimates that as many as 200 health centers in 24 states are at risk of closing without federal funding through Medicaid. The provision follows a June Supreme Court ruling that okayed state-level prohibitions on providing Medicaid funds to abortion providers.
