Supreme Court Should Let Pro-Life States Defund Planned Parenthood

The United States Supreme Court agreed Dec. 18 to hear a case examining whether Planned Parenthood can be a Medicaid-designated provider after the abortion giant sued South Carolina for determining that the organization is ineligible.

The law organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is representing South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Kerr in the case, Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. The petitioners appealed to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with Planned Parenthood South Atlantic in April.

According to the appeal to the Supreme Court, South Carolina had determined in 2018 that Planned Parenthood South Atlantic was ineligible to be a “provider” under Medicaid because it commits abortions.

“Taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund facilities that make a profit off abortion,” ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch said in the Dec. 18 ADF press release.

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Bursch expressed optimism that the Court’s decision will be consistent with a related ruling it gave in 2023 and that the Court will hold that federal courts cannot “second guess” decisions made by states regarding Medicaid-funded eligibility.

“Pro-life states like South Carolina should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities that peddle abortion are not qualified to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid,” Bursch said. “Congress did not unambiguously create a right for Medicaid recipients to drag states into federal court to challenge those decisions, so no such right exists.”

ADF’s petition to the Supreme Court argues that the issue is widely relevant to the U.S. because it scrutinizes the reach of Medicaid’s “any-qualified-provider provision.”

The provision, which the U.S. Congress added to the Medicaid Act in 1967, requires plans to allow Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries to choose “‘assistance from any [provider] qualified to perform the service … who undertakes to provide’ it,” according to ADF’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

“The Medicaid Act does not define ‘qualified,’” the petitioners stated in the appeal. “But it specifies that states retain broad authority to exclude providers ‘for any reason for which the Secretary could exclude the individual or entity from participation in’ the Medicare program, ‘[i]n addition to any other authority’ that states themselves retain to exclude providers.”

LifeNews Note: McKenna Snow writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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