On Thursday afternoon, President Trump signed legislation nullifying an Obama-issued rule that prohibited states from denying federal funds to Planned Parenthood and other health clinics that provide family planning services. The rule protected both clinics that provide abortions and those that don’t.
This measure faced considerable opposition last month, despite a 52-48 Republican majority in the Senate, before Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote to send the bill to Trump’s desk. Every single Democrat, along with Republicans Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), opposed the bill.
Anti-reproductive rights legislations are nothing new for Trump: days after his inauguration the fervent pro-lifer reissued a ban on federal funding to international NGOs that provide abortions or offer information about them.
Despite his explicit identification as pro-life, Trump has stirred confusion with conflicting statements about the issue. In the February 2016 Republican debate, Trump said that he “would defund it because of the abortion factor.. because I’m pro-life. But millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.” Then, in a March 2016 interview with MSNBC, Trump revealed that he believes that there “has to be some form of punishment” for women who get abortions. Finally, in a November interview with 60 Minutes, the then President-Elect vowed to appoint pro-life judges and said that if Roe v Wade were to be overturned, “it would go back to the states,” despite that such a thing would take away many women’s access to healthy and safe abortions.
Cries from the right to “defund Planned Parenthood” were heard long before Trump became president and were mostly based on the right’s strong stance against abortion. Yet, according to Planned Parenthood’s 2013 fact sheet, abortion services make up just 3% of the services provided that they provide. The abortions performed at Planned Parenthood clinics are not funded by federal tax dollars as the 1976 Hyde Amendment bars this. Most of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding is from Medicaid reimbursements for preventive care, and some is from Title X. If the most extreme scenario were to occur, and Planned Parenthood were be shut down, 2.5 million patients would lose care. Of course, however, none of this matters when the president and congressional Republicans have decided that ideology reigns.
