The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear South Carolina’s case against Planned Parenthood, which seeks to cut the abortion giant’s Medicaid funding.
South Carolina first tried to cut funding for Planned Parenthood in 2018.
Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, issued an executive order directing the state’s Medicaid agency to take abortion providers off its “family planning” services list.
State law prohibits Medicaid funds from being used for abortions except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or in cases of rape or incest. The Medicaid funds Planned Parenthood gets go toward the abortion provider’s other services, such as STD testing.
However, McMaster argued that any public money given to Planned Parenthood effectively “results in the subsidy of abortion.”
“The State of Carolina has a strong culture and longstanding tradition of protecting and defending the life and liberty of unborn children,” the governor wrote in his order.
In response, Planned Parenthood and one of its patients, Julie Edwards, sued South Carolina to keep her Medicaid coverage.
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The Supreme Court will take up the state’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that found federal law lets Medicaid patients choose their providers.
South Carolina currently bans abortion around six weeks or when cardiac activity is detected, with exceptions for the life and physical health of the mother, rape and incest up to 12 weeks, and fetal diagnoses dubbed “incompatible” with life.
At the time of McMaster’s executive order, abortion was still legal in South Carolina up to 22 weeks.
“Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to fund facilities that choose to profit off abortion, and South Carolina is free to use its limited funding to subsidize life-affirming health care,” John Bursch, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the state’s Medicaid agency, said Wednesday after the Supreme Court decided to take up the case.
“Taxpayer dollars should never fund abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. In 2018, I issued an executive order to end this practice in South Carolina. I’m confident the U.S. Supreme Court will agree with me that states shouldn’t be forced to subsidize abortions,” McMaster posted on X in response to the court’s decision to hear the case.
The case will be argued in the spring.
South Carolina’s case is one of several cases on abortion that the Supreme Court has taken up since Roe vs. Wade, the case that legalized abortion nationwide, was overturned in 2022.
In June, the court ruled to continue to allow access to the abortion pill, which is used for the majority of abortions.
