Latest news with #PlannedParenthoodAffiliatesofCalifornia
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Democrats sue over efforts to defund Planned Parenthood
SACRAMENTO, California — Attorney General Rob Bonta and 22 other Democratic attorneys general and governors are suing the Trump administration over a bid to strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood clinics. 'We need to just call it what it is: punishment for Planned Parenthood's constitutionally protected advocacy for abortion,' Bonta said at a press conference Tuesday morning. 'The hypocrisy is really hard to ignore: a party that claims to be defenders of free speech only seem to care about it when it aligns with their own agenda.' Congressional Republicans have wanted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood since Trump's first term. If they're successful, about 200 of the 600 clinics the nonprofit operates around the country could close, with over half of them in California. 'California is the most impacted state in the country,' said Jodi Hicks, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. 'It's important to have a California lens on this.' Bonta, the other attorneys general, and the governor of Pennsylvania argue in their filing that the Republican mega-spending and policy bill Trump signed in early July violates the First Amendment by targeting Planned Parenthood's national umbrella organization for its advocacy. They also allege it violates the Constitution's spending clause by being too vague and illegally singles out Planned Parenthood for punishment without due process. While the spending bill doesn't mention Planned Parenthood by name, it set funding criteria that targets the organization directly. The law bars Medicaid funds from going to reproductive health clinics that provide abortions and are part of national networks that received over $800,000 in Medicaid funding. Bonta said it isn't clear if any other providers would fall under the law, but at least one organization in Maine has also filed a suit. Federal funds already cannot be used for abortion, but Planned Parenthood clinics rely heavily on Medicaid funding to cover other services, with as much as 50 percent of its patients nationally enrolled in the government program. In California, eight in ten patients are covered by Medicaid. 'The federal government is once again playing politics with our health care system, with devastating consequences,' New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. 'This administration's shameful and illegal targeting of Planned Parenthood will make it harder for millions of people to get the health care they need.' Bonta's lawsuit is separate from one filed by Planned Parenthood clinics in Massachusetts and Utah along with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the umbrella organization that oversees state affiliates which run the clinics. In that case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Monday ruled that her preliminary decision to block the legislation's funding cut would remain in place. In siding with Planned Parenthood's arguments, Talwani wrote that Congress was trying to illegally punish clinics for the political work of the broader Planned Parenthood organization. Planned Parenthood, she concluded, was the ''easily ascertainable' target of the law when the legislation was passed.' Talwani also found that apart from the abortions the clinics perform, patients who rely on them for other services such as cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases would be harmed if Medicaid funding was cut off. In the week leading up to Talwani's decision, California's clinics were briefly defunded and five clinics closed down, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte announced. 'That lawsuit is just one strategy to fight back, and the reality is that an attack this severe requires a multi pronged response with both short and long term strategies,' Hicks said. 'These attacks are not going away, and this administration has certainly shown their colors.' Solve the daily Crossword
San Francisco Chronicle
03-07-2025
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
Republican spending bill could deal a huge blow to abortion access in California
Access to abortion in California could be substantially reduced if the House passes President Donald Trump's budget bill. The legislation, now awaiting a final vote in the House, would eliminate federal Medicaid funding for any type of medical care to organizations that perform abortions. An earlier version of the bill would have cut the funds off for 10 years, but lawmakers supporting the measure limited it to the 2025-26 fiscal year before the latest vote. Even so, Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, says it may have to close about one-third of its 600 U.S. clinics if it lost all $700 million of the federal funds it receives annually from Medicaid and the Title X family-planning program. Planned Parenthood says its 115 clinics in California serve about one-third of its patients nationwide — nearly 1 million per year, about 80% of whom are low-income patients on Medi-Cal. Clinics that remain open, for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, might have to limit their services without increased funding from private donors or from state and local governments. That means cancers would go undetected, sexually transmitted infections would be untreated and birth control would be less available. 'The public health infrastructure of California's most vulnerable communities will break down,' said Jodi Hicks, president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. Shelby McMichael, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson, said Wednesday that the organization 'worked with the state to ensure that these reproductive health services were in the state budget' for 2025-26, which includes funding for the clinics. But McMichael told the Chronicle that the federal legislation was 'effectively a back-door abortion ban, even in a state like California where voters have affirmed that it's a constitutional right.' She was referring to a ballot measure approved by two-thirds of the state's voters in November 2022, five months after the Supreme Court repealed the nationwide constitutional right to abortion that it had declared in 1973. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said the congressional action was 'a major step toward ending the forced taxpayer funding of the Big Abortion industry — a crucial victory in the fight against abortion, America's leading cause of death.' Congress cut off federal abortion funding for low-income women in the Medicaid program with the Hyde Amendment in 1977. A 1981 California Supreme Court decision has enabled the state to replace the federal dollars with its own funds for Medi-Cal abortions. California's laws would not be changed by the cutoff of federal funding to abortion providers. But by forcing shutdowns of abortion clinics and reductions in services from those that remain open, the congressional legislation would make it harder for many Californians to find abortion providers. 'Medi-Cal patients will have less places to turn for care, for any type of reproductive health care services, including abortion,' said Melissa Goodman, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy at UCLA Law School. 'The federal effort to defund those who provide abortion services is a key tactic for restricting abortion access in states that protect abortion by radically shrinking the pool of abortion providers who can afford to continue operating.' Mary Ziegler, a UC Davis law professor and author of several books on reproductive law, said some health care providers in California may have to stop providing abortions because of the loss of funding. Or, she said, they 'may have to scale back other services, their wait times may get longer or they may close.' In a separate action in March, the Trump administration ordered withdrawal of federal funding to California and other states for Title X, which pays for family planning programs for low-income residents and those who lack insurance. Those programs would have had to close without state funding, which was provided in the newly enacted 2025-26 budget. But on Wednesday, Essential Access Health, a nonprofit that administers Title X grants in California, said it had been notified by the Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services that the state would receive $12.2 million in Title X funding this year, about $1 million less than last year's family-planning funds. McMichael, of Planned Parenthood, said the state budget also includes funding to make up for the federal reduction. 'We recognize that this may be only a temporary reprieve,' as the administration could change course again in the coming months, said Shannon Olivieri Hovis, a spokesperson for Essential Access Health. She said advocates of the funding have sued the Trump administration in federal court in Washington, D.C. over nationwide reductions in Title X funding. Federal courts blocked a similar action by Trump's first administration in 2019. The congressional budget vote comes in the wake of the latest legal victory for abortion opponents, a Supreme Court decision allowing South Carolina to eliminate all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood or any other health care provider that also performs abortions. The state had banned the funding in 2018, saying funds provided for other services could be diverted by the providers to pay for abortions. A federal appeals court said the cutoff violated a 1965 federal law that requires states to allow Medicaid patients to receive services at any qualified institution. But in a 6-3 ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood on June 26, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said the law could be enforced only by the federal government, not by private parties like Planned Parenthood or the patient who joined the suit. Although the ruling applied only to states with laws against abortion funding, it could also affect states like California, which has provided abortions and other reproductive care for women who have been denied treatment in their home state.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Planned Parenthood 'outraged' by Newsom's proposed budget
OAKLAND, Calif. - Governor Gavin Newsom announced a proposed revised budget to address economic disruptions by the federal government. In the revised budget, the governor makes significant cuts to reproductive health services, like Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California said the cuts would essentially defund the organization in California. The backstory The governor said his proposal is adjusting for a projected $12 billion shortfall caused by what he calls a "Trump slump." The revised budget eliminates half a billion dollars towards Proposition 56, which pays for dental, family planning, and women's health providers to make room for funding the voter-mandated Prop 35, which expands Medi-Cal. "Because of Prop 35 and the fact that it is burdened over the next 2 fiscal years by $4.6 billion, it's increased the budget deficit, we are trying to figure out ways of offsetting that," said Newsom. What they're saying The CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California Jodi Hicks, who supported the passing of Prop 35, said the organization is outraged by the revised cuts, because they would slash Planned Parenthood's annual budget in California by one-third. She also argues the cuts go against Governor Newsom's promise to protect abortion access. "We called California the beacon of hope for anyone that needs health care, come to California. So it's a little bit of whiplash that now we're proposing these cuts," said Hicks. The organization said the cuts impact some of their most vulnerable patients. "Over 85% are on public programs, including Medicaid, and some of the most vulnerable patients, and so we're severely restricting access to women's health," Hicks said. This comes after Congress debated whether or not to defund Planned Parenthood services at the federal level. What's next "We'll certainly be fighting back and working with the legislature to ensure that these do not move forward," she said. Meanwhile, Newsom said he plans to keep his promise to support women's reproductive rights. "I absolutely am committed to any adjustments that we can make in partnership with the legislature to address those anxieties in the spirit of our support that has historically been placed," he said. Moving forward, negotiations will begin, and within a couple of weeks, legislative leaders will come to an agreement on a finalized budget, which will be announced in June.
