US supreme court weighs restricting Medicaid payments to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood | Abortion

In the first case related to abortion since then Donald Trump It has regained control of the White House, and the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday morning in a case challenging South Carolina’s attempt to “Defund” family planning the family because the reproductive health giant aborted abortion.

The case, the fifth debtor Family planning The South Atlantic, deals with an executive order for the year 2018 from South Carolina Henry McMaster, who prevented clinics that provide abortion from receiving compensation through Medikid, the United States The government’s health care program for low -income persons, despite the fact that these fees do not actually cover miscarriage. McMaster said at that time: “Paying the money of taxpayers to abortion clinics, for any purpose, leads to supporting abortion and denying the right to life.”

However, Medicaid Federal Law is prohibited from covering the vast majority of Abortion, which only consists About 4 % of family planning activities in the fiscal year 2022. Instead, people use medicaid to cover other services in family planning. In the same year, the organization conducted nearly half a million PAP tests and breast examination as well as STI tests and treatments. Birth control services also provided more than 2.2 million people.

The southern Atlantic family organization, a subsidiary of the family planning company that runs two clinics in South CarolinaShe collaborated with a patient who sought birth control, Julie Edwards, to sue McMaster. Since then, the lower courts have maintained the matter.

If South Carolina wins, it may pave the way for other countries to exclude family planning from their Medicaid programs as well as South Carolinin’s ability to access genital health care and family planning.

Of the 2.4 million people treated in family planning across the country every year, nearly half of them on Medicaid. About four out of 10 women who requested care at family planning clinics Say those clinics It is their last source of health care.

At the heart of the case, there is a federal item that ensures that people believed by medicaid can choose their service providers freely as long as they accept the program and be eligible to provide care. The issue depends on a technical argument: South Carolina – represented by the Christian Legal Alliance who defend freedom – that the beneficiaries of medicaid have no right to sue if they believe that the guarantee has been violated, partly due to the fact that Congress did not intend to have the beneficiaries of this right.

But this argument, legal experts warn, hide the broader consequences of the issue. If organizations such as planning the planned family are unable when they believe that the state is violating a mandate, it will become very difficult to prevent countries from discrimination against certain types of care, said Nicole Hopperfield, Professor of Health Law at Boston College of Boston University. health.

“Although the state is trying to claim that it has power and an unit to determine who is a qualified provider, this is not really related to whether the family planning is a qualified provider. It is related to a political account on abortion,” said Hopperfield. “Really, what is happening here is that the countries have taken political decisions about access to medical care.”

More than a million people in South Carolina use the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) – which is closely related to Medicaid – to insure them. Nearly 40 % of South Carolina’s provinces are believed to be “contraceptive deserts”, as there are not enough service providers to meet the needs of people who live there. South Carolina prohibits last abortion six weeks of pregnancy.

Since Texas ended the family planning from the Medicaid Governmental Program in 2021, it provides a window on what happens when people lose access to family planning. Termination affected Health care for about 8,000 Texas.

“Family planning, we heard over and over again, said a medical home for people with very few options for service providers,” said Anna Shatilon, a Resound Resound for Health, who led a study with Texas on how to finish their lives. “In many different interviews, we heard people talking about attending to get an appointment, and discovered that they were unable to use medicaid anymore, the absence of any idea of ​​any other place, and the experience of real disturbances to take care of them very quickly, but also serious emotional repercussions.”

the issue It is part of a broader and long -term campaign against abortion against family planning, which includes The ongoing lawsuit This can escape from the organization due to allegations that it intensifies a civilized.

On Tuesday, family planning announced that the Trump administration – which is scheduled to help in South Carolina to present its case in oral arguments – She has reached nine of its subsidiaries They will lose funding from the title X, the oldest and largest family planning program in the country. Politico I mentioned The money was withheld as a punishment for the efforts of diversity, equality and inclusion in the organization.