Pro-lifers must keep the pressure on if the abortion industry is to crumble

(LifeSiteNews) — It has been a miserable year for Planned Parenthood. 

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Carolina that the state can, in fact, bar the organization from receiving any payments through Medicaid. It was, the media noted grimly, “a major step toward the longtime conservative goal of ‘defunding’ the nation’s largest family planning provider.” 

Of course, that characterization sidesteps the reason that Planned Parenthood is so reviled: the fact that they are America’s largest abortion provider. Planned Parenthood has perpetrated millions of abortions; their 2022-2023 Annual Report notes that they committed 402,230 abortions that year alone. The number of people the abortion giant has killed over the past decades could easily populate a large city. 

READ: Sex & the City actress wears ‘Make Abortion Great Again’ hat to oppose funding cuts 

Now, after years of fruitless political effort, the Trump administration has managed to deny Planned Parenthood millions of taxpayer dollars as a part of a provision in the “Big, Beautiful Bill” passed earlier this month – albeit only for one year. The bill included a provision that blocks Medicaid reimbursements to any healthcare non-profit that provides abortion for one year, targeting those providers that received over $800,000 on Medicaid funds in 2023.  

Planned Parenthood claims that this could result in the closure of nearly 200 of their roughly 600 centers nationwide. The legislation, incidentally, does not mention Planned Parenthood by name, but the abortion giant immediately pinpointed the provision as a backdoor attempt to strangle them financially. Activists on both sides of the abortion debate similarly see the provision as targeting Planned Parenthood. 

Predictably, a federal judge has already intervened on their behalf. Planned Parenthood sued, ludicrously claiming that the provision was unconstitutional; a Massachusetts judge issued a temporary restraining order on July 7, blocking enforcement of the provision for 14 days to allow further hearings to take place. Planned Parenthood, of course, is insisting that impoverished Americans rely on their centers. Plenty of judges are sympathetic to their case. As of right now, Planned Parenthood is still receiving Medicaid money. 

Planned Parenthood has been calling in favors and rallying support. The press has been eager to intervene on its behalf; one truly mind-bending headline in the Boston Globe summarized the tenor of the coverage: “‘They’re playing politics with people’s lives’: Trump’s big bill would slash Planned Parenthood’s Mass. budget in half.” 

Playing with people’s lives? Indeed. Planned Parenthood might claim not to know when life begins, but they certainly know how it ends: at the end of a suction aspirator or set of forceps in one of their “health” centers.  

If the provision holds – and with the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, it seems likely that it ultimately will – Planned Parenthood may indeed be forced to close dozens, if not hundreds, of its centers. This would obviously be a significant pro-life victory, although not as significant as it would have been when the campaign to defund Planned Parenthood first began back in 2007, when then-Congressman Mike Pence introduce the first federal legislation to cut its funding. 

READ: Pro-life medical experts urge RFK to review FDA’s original approval of abortion pills 

Now, the majority of abortions are perpetrated with pills, and surgical abortions are on the wane. This means that Planned Parenthood has actually been improving their bottom line – selling abortion pills without the financial overhead necessary to commit abortions via suction aspirator or forceps 

Defunding Planned Parenthood is a necessary step, but it is no longer the death blow to the abortion industry it once might have been. Post-Roe America is now supplied with abortion via a network of pill dispensers, and brick-and-mortar clinics are no longer as important as they once were. 

Regardless, it has been a miserable year for Planned Parenthood – and that is very good news for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. 

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.