House Republicans Propose Defunding Planned Parenthood, Other Abortion Providers in Megabill

The proposal, folded into Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill,’ follows a move by the administration to strip Planned Parenthood of Title X funding last month.

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 16, 2023. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

House Republicans are proposing a cut to Medicaid reimbursements for organizations like Planned Parenthood as part of their sweeping policy bill to implement President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Within the Energy and Commerce Committee’s 160-page budget proposal released on Sunday, there is a provision that strips funding from organizations that provide abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or health risk to the mother.

The rule applies to any organization that receives more than a million dollars in annual federal funding, including Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. It blocks funding for such organizations for 10 years.

Although the federal government is already legally prohibited from funding abortion under the Hyde Amendment, Planned Parenthood has long been a recipient of tax dollars for other programs like cancer screening and family planning.

According to a recent report, around 34 percent of its funding came from federal government reimbursements and grants in 2023. That year, Planned Parenthood received around $792 million in taxpayer funds, and performed over 400,000 abortions.

Planned Parenthood said the proposal puts health objectives at risk.

“With this proposal, abortion opponents in Congress have declared they want working families to take on skyrocketing health care costs so they can give billionaires a tax break,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement on May 11.

McGill also said defunding Planned Parenthood would result collateral damage: an increase in undetected cancers, higher sexual infection rates, and increased birth control costs.

Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) also criticized the proposal, and vowed that she and other Democrats would stop it.

“Republicans tried and failed to defund Planned Parenthood in their last reconciliation bill and you can be sure that Democrats will be fighting with everything we’ve got to stop Republicans from ripping away access to care through Planned Parenthood this time around,” she said in a statement on May 12.

Earlier this year, Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) rebutted the claim that the issue at heart is women’s “comprehensive health care services.”

She noted that “in 2020, [Planned Parenthood] performed 383,460 abortions while the amount of prenatal services that they provided dropped from 40,000 to 9,000 in just 10 years.”

“It is clear that Planned Parenthood is not in the business of supporting women but instead providing abortions on demand,” she said in a statement on Jan. 14.

Her statement came as part of her reintroduction of the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, and the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act. The bills would strip Planned Parenthood of current funding, and would prevent it and all other organizations from accessing federal funds, unless they promise not to perform abortions.

Planned Parenthood is already under pressure, as it was hit by cuts from the Trump administration earlier this year when it was kicked from the Title X program in March.

That program provides funding for “natural family planning methods, infertility services, and services for adolescents, highly effective contraceptive methods, [and] breast and cervical cancer screening and prevention,” among other services.

The administration froze some of the organization’s funding based on allegations that Planned Parenthood and other groups had violated civil rights laws, and some of Trump’s executive orders.