As House Republicans work to get a budget deal, far-right conservatives are pressing for hundreds of billions of dollars in additional spending cuts, especially for Medicaid, and Donald Trump has unveiled a budget blueprint asking Congress to slash the nation’s overall spending on non-defense programs by more than $163 billion.
On top of that, late last week, House Speaker Johnson pledged to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood as part of the massive agenda bill. This goes beyond efforts already in place that block federal funding from going toward abortion care – which already keep millions of people from accessing the procedure.
This long-time Republican goal to defund Planned Parenthood will exacerbate the already drastic disparities in outcomes and options for people of color, people living in rural or otherwise medically underserved areas, and people with low incomes.
Our statement by Nourbese Flint, abortion rights expert and President of All* Above All:
“Everyone deserves the dignity to make their own family planning decisions without interference from anti-abortion politicians who sneak dangerous restrictions into every bill they can,” Flint says. “These attacks, like expanding the Hyde Amendment, are ruthless tactics used by the Trump administration and GOP officials whose mission is to keep our most vulnerable communities from getting health care – putting ideology over public health. Playing politics with reproductive care isn’t just reckless – it’s devastating, with very real consequences for families, communities, and lives. Medicaid and these federal health programs are the largest providers of reproductive health care in the country, with millions relying on them for everything from cancer screenings to STI testing. This strategy is completely unjust and must end with lawmakers in Congress protecting what’s left of our reproductive freedoms.”
It’s also possible the Trump administration plans to designate anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” as federally qualified health centers, since hundreds of these types of clinics across the country already receive millions of federal dollars.