Why Has Planned Parenthood’s Government Funding Increased?
If Planned Parenthood has not been receiving Title X funding, how is it that taxpayer funding for the organization has increased? The answer is that most of Planned Parenthood’s government funding comes from Medicaid. This is something that Planned Parenthood itself explains in this blog post from 2017.
Currently, the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of abortions, although President Biden (who rescinded the Mexico City Policy at the end of January) has said he supports repealing the amendment. But some believe that Medicaid must be funding abortions, given that Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. Paige Winfield Cunningham with the Washington Post states, “Medicaid doesn’t pay for abortions, but Republicans have still repeatedly tried to cut abortion providers from the program entirely, arguing all funds are fungible. And they’ve mostly been thwarted.”
Medicaid is not Planned Parenthood’s only source of government funding. According to Catholic News Agency (CNA), the organization received a significant amount of emergency funding last year: “Planned Parenthood affiliates also received as much as $150 million in emergency PPP loans earlier this year during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic—despite congressional stipulations that were intended to bar Planned Parenthood from the loans.” In addition, Fortune reports that state funding has been partly responsible for filling the gap left by Planned Parenthood’s withdrawal from Title X.
Even though Planned Parenthood’s report shows a record number of abortions and a record amount of taxpayer-funded revenue, its authors still lament their absence from Title X, as well as that the COVID-19 pandemic limited some people’s access to abortions. “Some politicians used COVID-19 as an excuse to limit access to essential health care,” they say. “We saw people drive 15 hours from Texas to Colorado for abortion…Now, champions for sexual and reproductive health are in the White House. We’re entering a new era where we can not only undo the damage of the last four years, but move policy, and collective imagination, forward.”
