Its reason for being is clear: to prevent and eliminate pregnancies.
Its reason for being is clear: to prevent and eliminate pregnancies.
O n Monday, a Berkeley-educated, Obama-appointed judge threw Planned Parenthood a life ring after Congress passed legislation that defunded the abortion conglomerate from Medicaid.
Six hours after Planned Parenthood filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, Judge Indira Talwani granted its wish. This injunction, which is set to be examined and possibly renewed on July 18, enables the organization to still receive taxpayer funding as the organization’s suit makes its way through the courts.
Is it possible that Talwani, upon receiving the 400 pages of filings from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. (PPFA), dropped everything and pored over the documents for the next several hours, before she reached a decision? Theoretically, yes. Is it much more likely that, upon seeing the words “Planned Parenthood” in the plaintiff’s header, she scribbled off an order granting whatever the abortion magnate desired? Absolutely, yes.
Talwani’s temporary restraining order is hardly a page long. As Dan McLaughlin observed: “You can’t argue with the judge’s reasoning, because there isn’t any; . . . the order is not accompanied by an opinion. It’s just a raw exercise of power.”
In the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, PPFA argues that millions of Americans will lack access to “essential health care” if Planned Parenthood providers cannot receive Medicaid payments. They argue, “If allowed to take effect and prevent Planned Parenthood Members from providing care to the almost 80 million Americans who rely on Medicaid for their essential health care needs, the Defund Provision will have devastating consequences nationwide.”
Their doomsday rhetoric continues: “If not enjoined, the Defund Provision will devastate Planned Parenthood Members, their patients, and the broader public health of the Nation. If allowed to take effect . . . the Defund Provision will jeopardize care for the more than 1,000,000 patients per year who receive care from Planned Parenthood Members through the Medicaid program — with many of those patients losing access to health care altogether.”
In the complaint, PPFA presents itself as the only entity in the country that provides sexual health care to patients on Medicaid. “The adverse public health consequences of the Defund Provision will be grave. The elimination or reduction in access to sexual and reproductive health care across the Nation is likely to lead to increased rates of undiagnosed and untreated STIs and cancer, as well as increased rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.”
And, of course, Planned Parenthood argues that “individuals with low incomes, who live in medically underserved or rural areas, and who are Black, Latinx, or members of other communities of color will disproportionately feel those consequences.”
Of course, if it were true that defunding Planned Parenthood would inhibit “almost 80 million Americans who rely on Medicaid for their essential health care needs” from receiving care and lead to other “grave public health consequences,” Judge Talwani’s actions would be understandable — noble, even.
However, all of these claims by Planned Parenthood are finely calculated BS.
The PPFA complaint fosters the myth that millions of Americans will lose access — their only access — to critical health care if any Planned Parenthood locations shutter. This just isn’t true.
The Health Resources & Services Administration funds nearly 1,400 health centers, which run more than 15,000 service sites. Their mission is to provide affordable, accessible, and high-quality primary health care to underserved communities. These health centers serve more than 31 million Americans, and, unlike Planned Parenthood, they provide a wide range of health care to Americans on Medicaid. These health centers have doctors, dentists, therapists, social workers, eye doctors, ob-gyns, pediatricians, case managers, and other medical professionals on staff.
These centers offer all of the services Planned Parenthood claims to offer — except abortion — along with services unavailable at Planned Parenthood sites, such as vaccines, diabetes treatment, and, crucially, care for infants before and after birth. In 2023, these centers served 585,000 pregnant women and hosted 172,000 deliveries.
This is not to say that Health Resources & Services Administration health centers always offer stellar care, but that Planned Parenthood providers are not the only operators on scene. Rather, they are small fish in a big pond of care providers that accept Medicaid: Community health centers outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities 15 to 1.
Planned Parenthood’s reason for being is clear: to prevent and eliminate pregnancies.
From 2013 to 2023, total cancer screening and prevention services offered by Planned Parenthood locations have dropped by 54 percent, including declines of 61 percent for breast exams and 54 percent for Pap tests. At the same time, the number of abortions provided has increased by 23 percent. While taxpayer funding increased by 50 percent from 2013 to 2023, the number of patients served by Planned Parenthood decreased from 3 million to 2 million.
In its annual report, Planned Parenthood boasts that abortion procedures account for only 4 percent of “total services” provided. However, this method of counting skews the reality — out of 2 million patients “served,” 400,000 received an abortion. In other words, one out of five women who walk into Planned Parenthood receive an abortion. Nearly all receive contraception of some kind.
For pregnant women who walk into Planned Parenthood, the numbers are much more dire. Ninety-seven percent of the time, pregnant women seeking help at Planned Parenthood were sold an abortion rather than any other form of care. Prenatal services accounted for 1.7 percent of visits, miscarriage care accounted for 0.9 percent, and adoption referrals accounted for only 0.5 percent.
And, as PPFA claimed, it’s true that Planned Parenthood “serves” a disproportionate ratio of minorities — more black and “Latinx” lives have been lost to abortion than to any other cause of death. For every black baby who is born, two are lost to abortion. (This was an explicit aim of Planned Parenthood’s eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger.)
If Planned Parenthood simply offered, say, sexually transmitted infection testing, cancer screenings, and mammograms, it could count on the continued stream of Medicaid dollars. However, it knows — and we know — that abortion is its spécial du jour.
The Hyde amendment for years has prohibited taxpayer dollars from going directly to abortion services. But this, of course, has limited effectiveness — because every dollar of federal funding that Planned Parenthood receives via Medicaid frees up another dollar to cover other “services.”
Through the reconciliation bill, Congress voted to financially decouple Health and Human Services Department funding from providers that offer elective abortions. (Planned Parenthood leads the pack on that front.) The power of the purse is one of the central powers of Congress — it is clearly within its purview to fund and defund certain entities according to the public will.
Planned Parenthood has guzzled so many taxpayer dollars over the years — $11 billion since 2000 — that it feels entitled to a continued stream of federal funding. But, as a White House official said, “The Trump Administration is ending the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion — a commonsense position that the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with.”
Reality is a hard pill to swallow. And yet, the abortion conglomerate is still fighting a futile battle in the courts.
If the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, the outcome will almost certainly disfavor Planned Parenthood. Just last month, the Court threw out pro-abortion lawsuits that challenged a state’s decision to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program.
So why would Planned Parenthood drag this out? In short, money.
Every day that the temporary restraining order holds, the abortion giant receives $2 million in taxpayer funding. If the temporary restraining order is affirmed by the First Circuit Court (or if a new one is granted), that number will snowball. Every extra week that the injunction holds is an extra $14 million in Planned Parenthood’s bank.
Let’s hope this suit is resolved as quickly as possible so that our taxpayer dollars can, finally, cease supporting the nation’s top abortion provider.