After the Senate passed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on July 1, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)—who claims
to be pro-choice yet loves to
vote yes on things that
screw over women—told reporters that deciding how to vote was “agonizing” and
that she “struggled mightily” before voting yes. The bill, which slashes
food benefits for the poorest Americans, “defunds”
Planned Parenthood, and cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, passed the Senate 51-50, with three Republicans joining Democrats in voting “no” and Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaker. Murkowski further told reporters that the bill was bad and she hoped the House and Senate would go to a conference
to improve it—which, of course, didn’t happen. The bill passed and now, a second reproductive health organization is suing the Trump administration in hopes of ensuring that thousands of people in Maine can continue receiving healthcare.
On July 16, the Center for Reproductive Rights
filed a lawsuit on behalf of Maine Family Planning against the Trump administration over the piece of the bill that aims to defund Planned Parenthood. “The provision’s parameters were designed to create plausible deniability that its sole target was Planned Parenthood; as a result, MFP got caught in its net,” the
organization’s lawsuit states.
The Defund Provision of the GOP bill doesn’t explicitly name Planned Parenthood or any specific organization; rather, it states that any nonprofit that offers abortion services and received $800,000 or more in revenue from Medicaid payments in 2023 is barred from receiving federal money. Most abortion providers aren’t even close to meeting that $800,000 threshold, so Planned Parenthood has argued that the bill is a backdoor way to target the organization for its abortion rights advocacy, thereby violating its freedom of speech.
But Maine Family Planning, which operates 18 clinics across the state—many of which are in healthcare deserts—receives about $1.9 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements. If the Defund Provision goes through, thousands of low-income Mainers will lose access to both primary and reproductive health care, including access to birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing. George Hill, the president and CEO of the organization, told the Associated Press that for about two-thirds of its patients, their clinics are the only source of medical care.
MFP’s lawsuit says the provision violates the Fifth Amendment and that the federal bill slashing Medicaid funding discriminates against Mainers who are low-income, live in rural areas, and/or are women. (You might be surprised to hear that Maine Sen. Susan Collins actually did the correct thing for once and was one of the few GOP senators who voted against this bill—but that doesn’t cancel out all her other shitty votes.)
“We are suing because this law will prevent thousands of Mainers from going to their trusted health care provider at Maine Family Planning, simply because they provide abortion care among many other services,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. The Hyde Amendment already prevents federal funding from covering abortion care—so the Trump administration is really just trying to punish any clinic that dares utter the word “abortion.”
A number of Maine Family Planning clinics say they’re continuing to see Medicaid patients, but are holding off on filing the paperwork for reimbursement for now. If the courts rule against MFP, they’d have to stop seeing Medicaid patients as soon as October 31.
“If our clinics close, rural hospitals will continue to close, straining the rest of the system and leading to longer wait times to access care,” Hill said. “Without Maine Family Planning, the infrastructure of our whole state network will crumble, and our patients will be left without help.”
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