Conservatives rage over re-funding of Planned Parenthood

Conservatives rage over re-funding of Planned Parenthood

Despite the restoration of Medicaid funding for health care services — but not abortions — dozens of closed clinics are not likely to reopen.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein. 07/04/2026 02:00 PM EDT

Planned Parenthood's beleaguered network of clinics will regain access to hundreds of millions in Medicaid funding this weekend — the fallout of Republicans' failure to pass an extension of the one-year defunding provision they approved last year.

Starting July 5, clinics around the country can once again bill the federal program for reimbursement after providing non-abortion services, like birth control and screenings for sexually-transmitted infections, to low-income patients. Though other funding threats loom, it's a lifeline for the struggling organization, which has closed nearly 30 health centers nationwide that collectively served more than 40,000 patients since the defunding provision in the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025.

Conservative lawmakers and activists are furious with GOP leadership for prioritizing other issues in the summer's budget battles — including immigration and military spending — over keeping taxpayer dollars out of Planned Parenthood's hands. In recent weeks, they have sent a barrage of angry letters to Capitol Hill, pressured the White House to intervene, and picketed outside the RNC headquarters in Washington.

Leaders of the anti-abortion movement say the restoration of taxpayer resources to one of the right's longtime nemeses is an even bigger blow to voters' morale than their other grievances with the Trump administration, such as its inaction on abortion pills, because they view it as backsliding on something already achieved.

"Now this is the default expectation from the pro-life movement," stressed Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading anti-abortion group that is spending tens of millions of dollars to boost conservatives in the upcoming midterms.

Though Republicans pushed last year to include a decade-long or even permanent defunding of Planned Parenthood in their megabill, a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian forced them to scale back to a one-year measure.

"I've thought all along that a third reconciliation bill is highly unlikely for any number of reasons. When [leadership] said, 'Well, we'll do that later,' my point was always: I don't know that there'll be a later," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told POLITICO.

Not including a measure defunding Planned Parenthood in Republicans' immigration-focused party-line bill that passed in June, he added, was a "huge missed opportunity."

"The fact that congressional leaders decided not to defund them as part of the last reconciliation bill is just beyond me," he said. "That was really taking the pro-life movement and pro-life voters for granted, because you're depending on those voters to turn out and vote for you in November."

Nora Walsh-DeVries, the vice president of political and legislative affairs for Planned Parenthood, said the past year of defunding caused "irreparable damage" to many communities where access to health services is already scarce.

The group reported this week that two-thirds of the health center closures occurred in rural areas, medically underserved areas, or areas with shortages of health workers. Across the national network, there were 250,000 fewer visits compared to the year before.

"The impact of this defund did not result in less abortion care. It just resulted in less people being healthy, less people being able to get care and access in a place that they want to get care and access," Walsh-DeVries said. "And there's not a way to put a number on how many people were not able to come in and get a cancer screening, and what that did to them."

At the same time, many threats to the organization's other sources of taxpayer funding remain. A Supreme Court ruling last year cleared the way for states to kick Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid networks, and several GOP-led states are expected to join South Carolina in doing so.

"We have to really continue to do the work that we're doing to make this as politically toxic as possible," Walsh-DeVries said.