Supreme Court gives South Carolina another chance to defund Planned Parenthood
For one state, defunding Planned Parenthood is at play again. This week, the United States Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that blocked South Carolina from ending public state funding to Planned Parenthood, sending the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for review.
The case, Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, stemmed from South Carolina’s termination of Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid provider agreement of the South Atlantic due to Planned Parenthood’s inclusion of abortion in its services. In South Carolina, Medicaid only covers abortions in certain circumstances required by federal law, such as rape, incest, or the need to protect the life of the mother (read more about why intentional killing by forced abortion is unnecessary).
On July 13, 2018, South Carolina’s governor issued a orders from superiors saying that the purpose of the order was to restrain South Carolina by indirect means subsidizing the practice of abortion. The sequence stated that “the State shall not contract with abortion clinics for family planning services.” It then directed the Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) to treat any “abortion clinics, as defined by section 44-41-75 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, as amended, and any affiliated physicians or professional medical practices, as defined and defined by Executive Order 2017-15, who are enrolled in the Medicaid program as ineligible to provide family planning services and, therefore, immediately terminate the them on due notice and reject any future provider enrollment applications for the same.”
On the same day, according to the initials lawsuit, State DHHS sent Planned Parenthood a letter stating that it “no longer . . . qualified to provide services to Medicaid beneficiaries” and the “enrollment agreements in South Carolina’s Medicaid programs [were] terminated” effective immediately. Two weeks later, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, filed a case which argued “that the organization provides ‘safe, legal abortions outside the Medicaid program’ and that the order violated federal law that allows Medicaid recipients to seek care from any qualified provider.”
At issue in the case, according to SCOTUS Blogis “(1) If spending clause laws give rise to private enforceable rights under 42 USC § 1983, and if so, what is the right framework for deciding when they will; and (2) whether, assuming that spending clause laws give rise to privately enforceable rights under Section 1983, the Medicaid ActThe provision of any qualified provider creates a private enforceable right to challenge a state determination that a provider is not qualified to provide certain medical services.”
But according to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)representing the State in the case, “After South Carolina determined that Planned Parenthood was ineligible to receive taxpayer funding as part of its Medicaid program, a federal district court forced the state to restore Planned Parenthood’s funding, which concluded that Medicaid recipients have the right to choose their preferred provider.”
“Representing the director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, ADF attorneys appealed to the 4th Circuit, which ruled against allowing the state to terminate Planned Parenthood as a qualified Medicaid provider. ADF lawyers filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case and hold that the Medicaid Act does not create a private right for Medicaid recipients to challenge a state’s decision that a particular provider like Planned Parenthood is ineligible to receive funding taxpayers,” ADF added.
ADF claimed that the High Court’s return of the case for reconsideration stemmed from the Supreme Court’s decision in a separate case — Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski. According to ADF Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel, “Congress did not expressly create a right for Medicaid recipients to drag states to federal court to challenge those decisions, so there is no such right exists. The recent decision of the Supreme Court in Talevski makes that clearer.”
Nationwide, there is a litany of terrible reasons why a state might want to defund Planned Parenthood in addition to the hundreds of thousands of preborn babies they target for abortion every year. Former employees have filed numerous accusations of racism against the corporation, and others say they treated clients and employees poorly. The abortion organization also failed to report child sexual abuse.
Planned Parenthood’s latest 2021-22 annual report announced that in one year, the abortion corporation took in the largest amount of taxpayer/government revenue on record – huge $670.4 million number of June 30, 2022, a large portion of that comes from Medicaid. Sadly, Planned Parenthood now receives over $1.8 million dollars from US taxpayers every day while ending the lives of over 1,025 preborn babies every day — nearly 43 every hour, and one every 84 seconds.
“Pro-life states like South Carolina should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities that market abortion are ineligible to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid. And we are grateful that the 4th Circuit will have another chance to hold that Congress did not intend to allow federal courts to second-guess state decisions about which providers are eligible to receive Medicaid funding,” said by Schandevel in response to the Supreme Court decision.
