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Anti-abortion groups are turning up their activism after a prohibition on Medicaid funding going to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood was left out of Republicans’ reconciliation 3.0 framework.
The dynamic threatens to exacerbate the tension between Republicans and anti-abortion activists, who were already expressing displeasure with the Trump administration for failing to use executive authority on issues like rolling back approval for medication used in abortions to be delivered by mail.
A one-year ban on abortion providers being able to bill Medicaid for non-abortion services, which was included in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed last year, expired on July 5.
Anti-abortion activists have for months been calling for such a provision to be included in another bill that could go through the same special budget reconciliation process that bypasses the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, allowing Republicans to push partisan legislation through both chambers.
Republicans’ second shot at a reconciliation bill, however, was a “skinny” package aimed at restoring funding for immigration enforcement and Border Patrol. And this week, House Republicans released a $95 billion reconciliation 3.0 framework teeing up money for defense, farm aid, and grants to encourage voting restrictions — omitting any measures to offset that new spending, or any other special provisions, including the measure to restrict Medicaid funds from going to abortion providers.
“Abortion defunding is the ideal offset, saving hundreds of millions in unethical spending year over year. Punting defunding from one iteration of reconciliation to the next is fiscally illogical and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Save America money and restore abortion defunding,” said Gavin Oxley, media relations manager at Americans United for Life.
Planned Parenthood Action noted last year, though, that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s provision that would defund its clinics would actually increase federal spending overall by $52 million over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Federal law prohibits federal Medicaid funds from being directly used on abortion procedures, but they can be used for services like contraception and screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
“Tens of thousands of patients have been denied access to services like cancer screenings and birth control and STI testing and treatment. These are things that just can’t be undone,” said Nora Walsh-DeVries, vice president of political and legislative affairs at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, previously said in a statement.
Anti-abortion advocates, however, argue that clinics like Planned Parenthood heavily rely on billing Medicaid for non-abortion services to prop up their ability to provide abortions.
A coalition of anti-abortion groups and lawmakers held a rally on Capitol Hill on Thursday calling to restore the ban on Planned Parenthood funding.
“This Congress should have acted long ago. There is no excuse — none — for Planned Parenthood to be receiving taxpayer money to be carrying out the mutilation of our children, to be carrying out the murder of the innocent unborn. And yet that is exactly what this Congress is now planning to do,” Sen. Josh Howley (R-Mo.) said at the rally.
The day after the prohibition, Students for Life Action announced that it updated its congressional scorecard to give every member of Congress an “F” for failing to extend the funding ban.
“Reconciliation is one path forward, and we should take it. We call on the GOP to use their authority in bills, amendments, and their own advocacy to finish what they started,” Students for Life Action government affairs coordinator Savanna Deretich said in a statement this week.
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), a key figure involved in crafting the latest budget reconciliation framework, acknowledged this week that the reconciliation 3.0 plan is much more limited in scope than what he and many other Republicans had been pushing and planning for over the last several months.
The idea of including a provision reinstating the ban on Medicaid funding for abortion providers was part of early discussions when crafting the reconciliation 3.0 framework, Arrington told reporters this week. But the political realities of trying to craft a limited bill that could quickly get through Congress and help replenish munitions depleted amid the Iran war meant that it was one of a number of wish-list items left out of the bill.
“There is definitely a group of members, more than just every other member, that would prioritize the abortion-related issues,” Arrington said. “We had the time, the luxury of time, in the Big Beautiful Bill to work through that and get at least a partial win for the pro-life movement, I was very happy about that.”
“The clock was our greatest threat to the broader opportunities,” Arrington said of crafting the bill this time. “Introduce that, then you’re going to have a whole set of moving parts.”
Activists, though, are looking beyond Congress for ways to prevent any federal dollars from flowing to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
“The Trump Administration can complete an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s bad acts, now underway at the Small Business Administration, and tell Planned Parenthood ‘You’re Fired,’ without 60 votes in the U.S. Senate,” Deretich, of Students for Life, said in a statement, referring to the agency seeking information to determine whether Planned Parenthood affiliates misrepresented themselves when applying to receive COVID-era relief funds. “For us, it’s all of the above when it comes to defunding.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in his Wednesday confirmation hearing also pledged to prioritize action to stop abortion medication from being available through the mail, in an encouraging sign for anti-abortion advocates.
“You know, I’ve seen video myself of what appears to be pills coming even from overseas to young women, and it doesn’t matter who applies for it, anybody can get it. There’s no instructions; they just come dumped out of a little plastic bag, and it’s wrong,” Blanche said. “And I very much commit our resources to stopping this.”
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