Senate Passes Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood Thanks to ‘Pro-Choice’ Sen. Murkowski

Bad.

By Susan Rinkunas | July 1, 2025 | 3:23pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics

Senate Passes Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood Thanks to ‘Pro-Choice’ Sen. Murkowski

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive spending bill that would spend $150 billion on mass deportations, cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, kick 10 million people off their healthcare, and “defund” abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. The vote was 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance slithering in to break a tie after three Republicans joined every Democrat in voting against it. The sickening bill still needs final approval in the House—which passed its own version in May by a single vote—before it would go to Donald Trump’s desk. This is not a done deal yet.

Trump has been calling the package “one big, beautiful bill,” but as you can see, it’s ugly and vicious. It targets people with Medicaid, a health insurance program for people with low incomes, pregnant people, children, and people with disabilities; millions now face potentially losing that insurance thanks to work requirements and the end of assistance to pay monthly premiums.

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As for abortion, the budget bill text doesn’t address Planned Parenthood by name; instead, it blocks funding from abortion providers for one year if they received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a single year. What conservatives call “defunding” is a misnomer; there’s no line item in the budget for Planned Parenthood. Plus, the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funding from covering abortion in nearly all cases—but some abortion providers accept Medicaid for other services like birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment.

Any money Planned Parenthood gets from Medicaid is payment for people using their insurance at the clinics. (The organization also gets federal grants to provide low- and no-cost birth control for low-income people through a program called Title X. The Trump administration is attacking that program and freezing grants, citing its executive orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.) Last week, the Supreme Court paved the way for more states to kick abortion providers out of Medicaid by ruling that a South Carolina patient couldn’t sue to challenge this policy.

Planned Parenthood has said that if the bill passes, nearly 200 of its clinics would shutter across 24 states, 90 percent of which are in states where abortion is legal. “The number of Planned Parenthood health centers in abortion access states could be cut in half,” their press release read. This bill could affect anyone who gets reproductive healthcare from the organization—no matter what kind of insurance they have—and it could further reduce options for abortion-seekers traveling to other states.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that blocking Planned Parenthood from Medicaid for even one year would increase the federal deficit by $52 million over 10 years, as fewer people are able to access services like birth control and more people give birth. The last time Republicans considered doing this in 2017, the CBO explained that costs would increase due to the fact that “the number of births in the Medicaid program would increase by several thousand per year.”

The Republicans who voted no were Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine. Collins faces re-election next year, and her approval rating is already in the toilet, while Tillis announced during heated negotiations and attacks from Trump that he would not seek re-election. Paul said he opposed the bill because it raised the debt ceiling.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has claimed to be pro-choice, voted for the bill. She is unfortunately not up for re-election until 2028. She told reporters after the vote that she “struggled mightily,” that her choice was “agonizing,” and that she hopes the two chambers go to a conference to improve the bill, rather than the House just rubber-stamping it.

Lisa Murkowski talks to the press shortly after she voted, quietly, “aye” on Trump’s tax bill. She said she hopes the House and Senate go to conference to improve it and called her vote “agonizing.”

— Steven T. Dennis (@steventdennis.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T17:26:38.689Z

The House version would have been even worse: It “defunded” abortion providers for 10 years, blocked marketplace insurance plans from covering abortion or gender-affirming care and banned Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care for people of any age, but those provisions were stripped out by a Senate official called the parliamentarian, who enforces the chamber’s rules.

There will now be a fight in the House, which has an unwieldy GOP conference including the far-right Freedom Caucus, plus three lawmakers representing districts that Kamala Harris won. They are Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), and Don Bacon (R-Neb.); Bacon recently announced his retirement.

Trump celebrated the bill’s passage in a post on Truth Social and urged the House to finish the job this week before the July 4th holiday. “We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4thvacation. The American People need and deserve it. They sent us here to, GET IT DONE!”

Stay tuned (derogatory).

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