SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 7.4.2026
In World Cup terminology the only way to describe it is an “Own Goal” by the Republican Congress for its failure to pass an extension of an abortion defunding bill.
The best event on the Fourth of July for the blogger is to learn that Planned Parenthood funding has been restored.
The anti-choice crowd is in an uproar. Having fully expect their reactionary allies in Congress would continue to do their bidding.
Pro-choice advocates have fought hard and need to remain vigilant. The foes of a woman’s right to control her body are relentless.
Excerpted from Politico 7.4.2026
Planned Parenthood’s beleaguered network of clinics will regain access to hundreds of millions in Medicaid funding this weekend — the fallout of Republicans’ failure to pass an extension of the one-year defunding provision they approved last year.
Though Republicans pushed last year to include a decade-long or even permanent defunding of Planned Parenthood in their megabill, a ruling from the Senate parliamentarian forced them to scale back to a one-year measure. Anti-abortion activists — who warned at the time that the GOP would struggle to pass an extension in the lead-up to the midterms — have demanded in vain that Republican leadership ignore or fire the parliamentarian in order to get it done.
Nora Walsh-DeVries, the vice president of political and legislative affairs for Planned Parenthood, said the past year of defunding caused “irreparable damage” to many communities where access to health services is already scarce.
The group reported this week that two-thirds of the health center closures occurred in rural areas, medically underserved areas, or areas with shortages of health workers. Across the national network, there were 250,000 fewer visits compared to the year before. And while nearly a dozen progressive-leaning states where abortion is legal, including California, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, dug into state coffers to backfill some of the lost funding, red states that prohibit the procedure did not, resulting in the shuttering of many facilities that only provided non-abortion services like contraception and pelvic exams.
Starting July 5, clinics around the country can once again bill the federal program for reimbursement after providing non-abortion services, like birth control and screenings for sexually-transmitted infections, to low-income patients.
Though other funding threats loom, it’s a lifeline for the struggling organization, which has closed nearly 30 health centers nationwide that collectively served more than 40,000 patients since the defunding provision in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025.
Leaders of the anti-abortion movement say the restoration of taxpayer resources to one of the right’s longtime nemeses is an even bigger blow to voters’ morale than their other grievances with the Trump administration, such as its inaction on abortion pills, because they view it as backsliding on something already achieved.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/04/planned-parenthood-abortion-medicaid-congress-00985879
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