Supreme Court takes up South Carolina bid to defund Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday took up a long-running dispute in South Carolina over the state’s attempt to prevent the health care provider Planned Parenthood from participating in the Medicaid health program.

The technical legal issue is whether people eligible to use Medicaid, a program for low-income people administered by states, can sue in order to pick the qualified health care provider of their choice.

Republican-led South Carolina has long sought to bar Planned Parenthood from participating in Medicaid because it provides abortions. The legal landscape in the state has changed since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. South Carolina now bans all abortions after six weeks — a threshold that makes the procedure increasingly rare.

Planned Parenthood has facilities in Charleston and Columbia that now provide limited abortion care in line with the new ban as well as other health care services including contraception, cancer screenings and pregnancy testing.

Julie Edwards, a patient who wanted to use Planned Parenthood to obtain contraception services, joined the group in suing the state following a decision in 2018 that found abortion clinics could not provide family planning services under Medicaid.

The case has bounced around the courts since a district court judge ruled that the state could not bar Planned Parenthood from participating in the program.

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State officials are represented in the case by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

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"Pro-life states like South Carolina should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood and other entities that peddle abortion are not qualified to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid," one of the group's lawyers, John Bursch, said in a statement.

Jenny Black, president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said the case was putting politics ahead of the right of patients to choose their providers.

"Every person should be able to access quality, affordable health care from a provider they trust, no matter their income or insurance status," she said.