A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the provision of President Donald Trump’s tax cut megabill that would defund Planned Parenthood nationwide for one year.
This is the second time U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has blocked this provision. Earlier in the year, she blocked the law from applying to Planned Parenthood affiliates, but this ruling was stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, noted Politico’s Josh Gerstein.
Planned Parenthood’s federal funding by law already cannot be used for abortions, but can fund other services like cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing, through Medicaid and Title X.
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, organizations that mainly provide family planning services, perform abortions, and received over $800,000 in Medicaid payments in fiscal year 2023, are excluded from Medicaid payments — a set of restrictions designed explicitly to only apply to Planned Parenthood. This provision will expire next July.
In the meantime, the denial of Medicaid payments has caused a significant disruption to care, as well as abortion care that isn’t directly funded by federal programs, with one local network of Planned Parenthood clinics in Wisconsin seeing major disruptions in care.
22 states and the District of Columbia sued over the provision, arguing it severely strains the rest of their health care system. In her ruling, Talwani agreed.
“Where a State system is already at capacity, a loss [of] one of the State’s largest providers of care for Medicaid patients would mean that at least some of these patients will not be able to access a new provider for family planning services, reproductive care, and related medical care,” said the ruling. “It is therefore not speculative to conclude that enforcing Section 71113 would increase the percentage of patients unable to receive birth control and preventive screenings, thereby prompting an increase in States’ healthcare costs.”
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