The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday to block low-income Medicaid patients in South Carolina from choosing Planned Parenthood as their healthcare provider, effectively excluding the nonprofit from receiving government funding.
What is Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic?
The court’s conservative majority based its ruling on Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case that originated from a 2018 executive order by Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster banning Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics because they provide abortion care, according to The 19th and health policy organization KFF.
State-run Medicaid programs typically follow federal guidelines but also allow recipients to choose their healthcare providers.
“A State plan for medical assistance must… provide that any individual eligible for medical assistance… may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required… who undertakes to provide him such services,” according to the United States Code on state medical assistance law.
The latest ruling means Medicaid recipients no longer have the freedom to choose their healthcare providers, which blocks Planned Parenthood from the list of options available to them.
Additionally, beneficiaries lose the ability to sue over civil rights violations protected under federal law Section 1983, a reversal from the 2023 Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski case, which upheld patients’ right to choose their healthcare providers, Vox reported.
The impact on South Carolina Medicaid recipients
While the ruling only affects South Carolina Medicaid recipients, it could prompt other Republican-led states to cut off federal funding to all Planned Parenthood clinics.
The organization is the nation’s leading provider of affordable reproductive and sexual health care. While the nonprofit is often associated with abortion services, it also offers contraception, cancer screenings, STD testing and mental health care.
In South Carolina, nearly 60% of Medicaid recipients are people of color, and about 400,000 are women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to The 19th. However, Medicaid does not cover most abortions in many states, including South Carolina.
If Planned Parenthood clinics lose federal funding, they may be forced to turn patients away or require them to pay out of pocket for services previously covered by insurance.
Experts speak out following the court’s ruling
The court’s decision could limit the options for many people who have Medicaid as their insurance provider. Michele Bratcher Goodwin, co-faculty director at Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, explained how this could drastically impact low-income people from exercising their right to free choice.
“This case fits within a pattern of anti-abortion lawmakers and governors seeking to weaponize their authority and overreach into constitutionally and federally protected spaces to deny not only abortion rights, but any other type of reproductive health care that they themselves personally disagree with,” she said, according to Axios.
Anti-abortion advocates have viewed the ruling differently, stating that it reduces the risk of more unborn babies allegedly being harmed at Planned Parenthood clinics.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement.
