Planned Parenthood braces for defunding possibility

After a day one that saw President Trump already signing several executive actions, many wonder what comes next for national issues such as abortion.

Though President Trump has consistently rejected supporting a national abortion ban, those who oppose abortion are hoping for other forms of action.

Matt Sande works for Pro-Life Wisconsin. While a national abortion ban is one that organization’s goals – the defunding of Planned Parenthood is also on his mind.

“They reached a total public tax dollars received at about $700 million in 2022-2023. So you know, the idea of defunding Planned Parenthood is out there.” Sande said.

That figure refers to grants and reimbursement payments for services from Medicare and Medicaid. Defunding would see these stopped. This is something that concerns Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States.

“If you’re cutting off access to funding, you are really impacting a full range of health services” Richardson explained.

Those services Planned Parenthood provides go beyond abortion, which is not funded by taxpayer dollars. This has been prohibited by the Hyde Amendment since the late 1970s. Despite this, Richardson is worried about a ripple effect.

“What we know is that when abortion care is attacked, it also decreases access to sexual and reproductive health care overall. So when you have less appointments for people to pick up their birth control, for example, or HIV prevention, thinking about cancer screenings, those are all of the things that are at stake.”

While Sande says he was disappointed that the RNC backed away from a national abortion ban, he still feels defunding is a real possibility with the new administration.

“With this new department, this federal Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they’ve suggested that in their efforts to save money , they have Planned Parenthood in their sights as far as defunding them, which we would definitely support,” Sande said,
“So we’ll just have to see what happens with the defunding of Planned Parenthood.”