Last year, Congress delivered its most significant pro-life victory ever by ending federal funding to big abortion providers for a year. But on July 4th, America’s 250th birthday, that funding will be restored unless Congress acts. What is the current status of that effort?
For decades, Planned Parenthood and other big abortion providers have leeched off the taxpayer’s dime. In their recently released annual report, Planned Parenthood acknowledged that they received $832 million in federal funds last year alone. Meanwhile, the business leveraged these resources to promote harmful initiatives that actively attack our communities through abortion, transgender agendas, and anti-family political campaigns. Additionally, rather than serving the healthcare needs of our communities, Medicaid funds were misappropriated to pay for irreversible and unnecessary sex-denying procedures on minors. That’s why we celebrated when Congress passed a provision to freeze Medicaid reimbursements to big abortion providers, like Planned Parenthood, for a year.
The language was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, a reconciliation package that was able to bypass the Senate’s typical 60-vote threshold by instead requiring a simple majority. To extend it, Congress will have to include language to do so in another reconciliation package since Senate Democrats do not support the provision. For much of the year, advocates, including Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, have been pushing for a Reconciliation 2.0 to pass before July 4th , a bill that includes not just the extension of the freeze on Medicaid reimbursements to abortion providers, but other important agenda items related to protecting women’s sports, lowering housing costs, and reducing wasteful government spending.
The rub is that Congress has other aspirations with which it hopes to deal, such as reopening the still-unfunded Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Because Senate Democrats have thus far refused to pass any legislation that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol (CBP), the Senate is currently attempting to pass a reconciliation bill narrowly focused on restoring funding to those agencies. While it is critical that these agencies are fully operational, that DHS employees receive paychecks and are able to defend the homeland, passing this particular reconciliation bill is eating up time that cannot be spent on a larger package.
Although what’s been dubbed the “skinny” reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP does not include a means to extend the abortion funding provision, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) used a procedural maneuver to highlight Congress’s imperative to pass that provision before July. During the Senate’s voting session on the budget resolution Wednesday night, Hawley introduced an amendment to add a provision to extend the abortion measure for 10 more years. The amendment was not germane to the bill and therefore required 60 votes to be added to the bill. A majority of Senate Republicans voted in favor of it, but the measure ultimately did not pass. But we at CWALAC were able to score the vote and use it to spotlight the ongoing problem in upcoming opportunities to fight to get this issue over the finish line.
Although the resolution for the skinny bill passed in the Senate, there is no guarantee it will do so in the House. Many House Republicans are advocating for a larger bill that includes both ICE and CBP funding, along with all of the other agenda items that they want to get through before the November elections. However, with the slim majority that Republicans have in the House, cobbling together a bill that can get enough votes to pass will take time, further delaying the full reopening of DHS and possibly overshooting the July 4th deadline. Another alternative is for the House to take up the skinny bill put forth by the Senate and attempt to amend it to include the abortion defund provision.
All this to say that the current status of the effort is messy, but there are a number of options on the table to maintain the freeze on big abortion’s federal funds. Please pray for us as we continue to fight to defund Big Abortion.
Congress must not allow abortion providers like Planned Parenthood to have their funding restored in July. We cannot celebrate America’s 250th birthday by funding the organization responsible for the death of thousands of children through abortion and harmful gender treatments every year. Congress set an important precedent last year – rather than take any steps backward, they need to build on it.
Use our action center to contact your legislator and tell them that no taxpayer funds should go to organizations that perform and promote abortion.
