One of the co-chairs of the U.S. House Pro-Life Caucus praised the U.S. Supreme Court Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic decision Thursday permitting states to redirect Medicaid funding away from Planned Parenthood.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a major victory for South Carolina, which rightly decided to make its federal and state Medicaid dollars available for genuine, life-affirming health care options instead of using them to fund abortion giant Planned Parenthood—an organization that has aborted over 10 million babies since 1970, an absolutely numbing loss of life,” Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) said in a statement.
"This decision frees other states to invest in real healthcare without fear that Planned Parenthood will misuse the court system to block a state’s right to administer its own Medicaid program and choose not to subsidize organizations that pay for elective abortion,” said Smith, a vocal and active pro-life and pregnancy help proponent.
Medina v. Planned Parenthood was a 6-3 decision written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The ruling is being heralded as a victory for South Carolina and other states that wish to direct Medicaid funds away from Planned Parenthood.
In the case the Court considered whether life states can direct their limited Medicaid funds, which are meant to assist low-income citizens in obtaining necessary medical assistance, away from abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.
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The Court found that the Medicaid statute, “does not clearly and unambiguously confer individual rights enforceable under §1983 (U.S. Code on Civil action for deprivation of rights).” Thus, the Medicaid statute does not give a private right for Planned Parenthood, via its patients, to sue to challenge a state’s decision to stop funding it through Medicaid.
Medicaid reimbursements are far and away Planned Parenthood’s largest federal funding source, supplying $1.5 billion in reimbursements nationwide over three years, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Tweet This: Medicaid reimbursements are Planned Parenthood’s largest federal funding source, with $1.5 billion in reimbursements nationwide over 3 years
South Carolina had determined that abortion providers were ineligible to receive Medicaid funding in 2018 owing to their abortion activities and the narrow scope of their services. Planned Parenthood sued in response to this, arguing that its patients have a right to the “qualified provider of their choosing” under the Medicaid Act [42 U.S.C. §1396a(a)(23)], seeking to force South Carolina to reverse its decision.
The Supreme Court ruled June 26 that:
- While “Congress sometimes allows private enforcement through §1983,” … “statutes create individual rights only in “atypical case[s]” and “[d]eciding whether to permit private enforcement poses delicate policy questions involving competing costs and benefits - decisions for elected representatives, not judges.”
- “Spending-power statutes are especially unlikely to confer enforceable rights.”
- Congress must “clearly” and “unambiguously” alert States that private enforcement was a funding condition.
- “Section 1396a(a)(23)(A) lacks the required clear rights-creating language.”
There had been three appeals in the case for which Smith and other pro-life Members for Congress joined in amicus briefs, and with Smith additionally joining a fourth friend of the court brief. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in December 2024.
“Planned Parenthood - ‘Child Abuse Incorporated’ - goes to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize and cover-up the battered baby-victim, but the truth is that the elective decapitations, dismemberments and starvation that Planned Parenthood commits and facilitates are not health care,” Smith said. “Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the multibillion-dollar abortion industry through their Medicaid dollars.”
