On Thursday, The Supreme Court Delivered a Decision This Couuld Be a Death Knell for Planned Parenthood Health Centers Across the Nation.
In a 6-3 decision Authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, The Court's Conservative SuperMajority Decided that the Federal Medicaid Act Does Not Give An Individual The Right To Bring A Civil Rights Lawsuit Challenging the Termination of A Specific Medicaid Provider from That State's Network.
The Supreme Court's Ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic IS Its Latest Assault On Reproductive Health Care. The case Also Marks Another Victory for the Alliance Defenseing Freedom, The Christian Conservative Litigation Shop Behind the Dobbs Decision, in Which the High Court Reversed ROE v. Wade and Ended the Federal Right to an abortion. (ADF Lawyers Representated The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in the Lawsuit.)
Supportters of Planned ParentHood Have Lug Feared That The Case Coul Pave The Way For States Across the country to Kick the Largest Provider of Women's Health Care Nationwide Out of Their Medicaid Networks Too. Now, that seems like a distinct possibility.
Seven Years ago – Before ROE v. Wade Was Overturned, Before President Donald Trump was electted again, and before a Republican-Controlled Congress Was Poise to approach The Largest-Ever Cuts To Federal Funding for Planned Parenthood-South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster Sought to Kick the Organization Out of His State's Medicoid Network.
There are Two Planned Parenthood Health Centers in South Carolina; Together they need an estimated 6,000 patients in Year. But Back in 2018, McMaster Issued An Executive Order Directing South Carolina's Medicoid Agency to Look For Ways To Keep Planned Parenthood – Which Provides Birth Control, Sti Testing, and Cancer Screenings, in addition to Abyment Services – From Receiving Any Public Money At all. “Taxpayer Dollars Must Not Directly or Indirectly Subsidize ABORATION PROVIDERS,” he said at the time.
Federal Law Already Bars Medicoid Money From Going Toward ABORTION CARE Except in the Most Limited Set of Circumstances, and Abortion is now banned in South Carolina AT 6 Weeks Gestation with Very Few Exceptions, But McMaster Continued His Crusade – Even after Court Court Ruled Against Him.
Back in 2018, to South Carolina Woman – A Medicaid container Who Received Her Health Care at a Planned Parenthood Center – Sued, Saying that McMaster's Order Deprived Her of Her Right to Choose Her Own Health Care Provider, A right that was Guaranteed by the Federal Medicoid Act. Later, in 2020, The Woman, Julie Edwards, Won and the Fight McMaster Picked With Planned Parenthood loaked to be over.
But, Two Years After that, A New Decision From the Supreme Court Revived the Case, and On Thursday, The Court's Majority Ruled Against Planned Parenthood.
In a Dissenting Opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Wrote, “TODAY'S DECISION IS Likely to Result in Tangible Harm to Real People.” She Was Joined in Her Opinion by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
“At a minimum, it will deprive medicoid contains in South Carolina of Their Only Meaningful Way of Enchesome a right that congress has expressly Granted to Them,” Jackson Aided. “And, More Concretel, It Will Strip Those South Carolinians – And Countless Other Medicoid contains Around The Country – Of A Deeply Personal Freedom: The 'Ability to decide who Treats Us at our monnerable.'
Thursday's Loss Before the Supreme Court was a First for the Plaintiffs. Susanna Birdsong, The General Counsel and Vice President of Compliance for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, Tells Rolling Stone That prior to this decision, “We Won A at Every Stage of the litigation.” Most recent, The Fourth circuit re-Examined the case and reached it original conclusions: That federal medicaid act alows patients to choose their provider-Any qualified provider-and the state of south carolina couusn't arbitrarily tell a person like julie edwards that she choose an an an an Otherwise Qualified Provider.
Now, Birdsong Says That Planned Parenthood is “Looking at all of our options” – Legally and Otherwise – “To continue to Fight for our patients.”
“While I'm deeply disappointment that the court Ruled the way that they did – and i think Wrongly Decided that the Medicoid Act Does Not conferring This Right … There are Other Potential Ways to Challenge What the State is Trying to do here, “Birdsong Adds.
Condemnation of the decision, Meanwhile, Was Swift and Loud from Reproductive Rights Advocates Across the Country.
Destiny Lopez, CEO of the Guttmacher Foundation, A Reproductive Policy Institute, Called the Decision “A serious injustice.”
“At A Time When Health Care is Almedady Costly and Difficault to Access, Stripping Patient of Their Right to High-Quality, Affordable Health Care at the Provider of Their Choosing is a Dangerus Violation of Bodily Autonomy and Reproductive Freedom,” Lopez Aided, City Guttmacher Data that Showed That One One One One One One One One One One One One One In Three Patients Who Sought Out Birth Control in 2020 Received it from a Planned Parenthood.
“TODAY'S DECISION FAVORS EXTREMISS WHO'D Rather Let Someone Die of Cancer THAN Let Them Get A Cancer Screening At Planned Parenthood,” Nancy Northup, President and Ceo of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Said in A Statement. “The Decision Will Put Fuel On the Fire of the Multi-Year Campaign to Deny Medicaid Patients Their Right to See Planned Parenthood Providers For Contraceptives, Sti Testing, And Other Non-ABORATION SERVICES Patient in Making Health Care Decisionis. ”
Planned ParentHood Has Previously Estimated That If South Carolina Won the Case, Nearly 200 of Their Health Centers in 24 States Across the Country would be Threatened with Closure, with the Vast Majority – 90 percent – of Those Closures to Occur in States Where Abory is Legal.
The State of Texas Has Almedy Removed Planned Parenthood from Both Its Publicly-Funded Family Planning Program and Its Medicoid Network. The Results Have Been Stark. According to a Report Report Earlier This Month, The Perntage of Enrollees Accessing Care Dropped From 90 Percent in 2011 to 59 percent in 2023
