The Supreme Court of the United States decided on Thursday that the Medicaid payments to the planned parenting, the country’s largest abortion provider, could exclude.
The federal government and many states already block Medicaid funds to cover the abortion. However, the state health insurance program for people with lower income pays for other services from the planned parenthood, including birth control, cancer examinations and tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.
The verdict is carried out at a moment when the congress is considering blocked the planned parenthood by the fact that the financing of Medicaid for state states will be obtained from Federal Medicaid. The group would force hundreds of clinic closures – most of them in states in which abortion is still legal.
Here are things about the situation:
In principle, abortion opponents see it as a victory
This legal dispute applies to an executive regulation from 2018 by Henry McMaster, governor of South Carolina, the abortion providers from receiving Medicaid money in the state, even for services that do not contain abortion.
In its 6-3 judgment, the Supreme Court overridden in front of court court courts and that the patients do not necessarily have the right to sue Medicaid to cover their health care from certain providers.
In principle, abortion opponents welcome it as a victory.
“Nobody should be forced to subsidize abortion,” said Catholicvote President Kelsey Reinhardt in an explanation.
Proponents of abortion rights say that it will affect access to health care
Followers of Planned Parenthood see the judgment as an obstacle to health care, apart from the abortion.
Planned Parenthood “offers services for highly disadvantaged population groups, and this not only means that many women in the state lose their right to choose providers, but that many women will lose services as a whole,” said Lawrence Gostin, who specializes in the law on public health law in the law of Georgetown.
For many people with medicaid, Gostin said, Planned Parenthood is a trustworthy service provider, and it is often the next.
Others emphasize that people who could be the most affected are women who are already exposed to the greatest obstacles to health care.
“The people who have enrolled for Medicaid, including young people with colors, are already exposed to too many obstacles to health care,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, Executive Director of Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equality. “This decision worsens a difficult situation.”
The effects may be tight in South Carolina, but elsewhere
Planned Parenthood has two clinics in South Carolina, one in Charleston and one in Columbia.
Together from Medicaid, they received around 90,000 US dollars a year of almost 9 billion US dollars a year, which the program issues in the state.
South Carolina banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy before many women realize that they are pregnant. It is one of four countries that can dividle abortion at this point. Another 12 force bans in all phases of pregnancy. The bans were implemented after the Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade had lifted in 2022.
The most recent judgment of the Supreme Court is not a guarantee that other states will follow South Carolina’s leadership, but the general lawyer of the Republicans of 18 other countries submitted the position of the state in this case.
“We can imagine that there are states against abortion legislators who could search for and try to replicate what South Carolina did,” said Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of Federal Politics at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports the rights of abortion rights.
The federal government is also aimed at the planned parenthood
The US house adopted a budget measure last month that excludes all federal payments to non -profit groups for 10 years, deliver abortion and received more than $ 1 million in federal financing in 2024.
A coordination in the Senate on the measure that President Donald Trump supports could happen in the coming days.
According to Planned Parenthood, if the measure becomes the law, it would force its connected companies to close up to 200 of their 600 institutions in the United States.
If the federal efforts are successful, Friedrich-Carnik said that states that the support of abortion rights could operate their own tax revenue to keep the clinics open.
On a call with reporters this week, Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of SBA Pro-Life America, said it was a priority for her group to limp Planned Parenthood.
She said that hungry planned parenthood of Medicaid refunds would not have a major impact on the patients, since other clinics offer similar services without providing abortion.
“Medicaid money is bound to the person so that they keep the same amount of money,” said Dannenfelser. “She will simply bring it to another place.”
Abortification financing has already been beaten
The judgment of the Supreme Court of 2022, which ended the nationwide right to abortion, has dropped the abortion system in the USA and struggled with clinics.
Women in states with prohibited now operate abortion pills or trips in countries where it is legal.
Surveys have found that the number of monthly abortions has increased since the court ruling at the national level.
But during the same period, some clinics have closed and means that aid people get abortion, said it was challenging to stretch their money to cover the additional travel expenses.
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