The provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) that cuts off Medicaid funding to entities that perform elective abortions has been the greatest victory for the anti-abortion cause since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022).
Yet Planned Parenthood doesn’t seem to want to pay attention to American jurisprudence on abortion.
Constantly seeking activist judges who will uphold their cause, despite the will of the people and their elected representatives, Planned Parenthood found its latest ally in U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee.
She issued a temporary injunction that blocks the defunding measure.
I’m convinced this will not last and will ultimately be reversed.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said it best, “Simply put, Planned Parenthood has no right to taxpayer money, and this Court should not invent such a right.”
The high court recently addressed the longstanding problem of district court judges carrying out power grabs against the president of the United States by blocking executive orders.
For all practical purposes, they can’t, because courts exist to resolve cases and controversies on behalf of the parties before them, and not to annul nationwide policies enacted by the duly elected president.
The current order of Judge Talwani restoring the $2 million per day funding of Planned Parenthood is an even more egregious example of judicial overreach, because it was literally an act of Congress that stopped such funding.
And the fact that federal law can stop funding the abortion industry has long been held by the Supreme Court as constitutional (see, for instance, Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 1991, with its well-known assertion that the state may favor childbirth over abortion.)
Moreover, the Dobbs decision firmly placed abortion-related policy back in the hands of the people and their elected representatives.
This is why, both at the state and federal level, the abortion industry keeps receiving defeat after defeat when they try to block pro-life measures.
Of course, it’s hard to break a decades-long habit.
It’s literally a knee-jerk reaction for them to run to the courts to stop the anti-abortion will of the people.
Aside from all this, Planned Parenthood makes exceptionally weak arguments in this case before Judge Talwani’s court.
They claim discrimination and legislative punishment.
This claim fails, because first of all the cessation of Medicaid funding does not apply just to Planned Parenthood, but to the entire abortion industry.
Second, this provision of the OBBBA does not target any past behavior.
Planned Parenthood is not being “punished” because they have been providing abortions in the past. They are being told that if, as of this coming Oct. 1, they still plan to sell elective abortions, they are not entitled to our taxpayer dollars to do so.
No punishment here, just a choice.
And third, the judge had to amend her temporary restraining order because, consistent with the required rationale for such orders, there has to be a likelihood of success on the constitutional merits of the claims.
The only ones of the several claims Planned Parenthood is making that are considered likely to succeed are those that say some of their affiliates do not perform abortions, and therefore are not technically disqualified from the funding.
And yet, the judge’s order goes ahead and restores funding not just for that subset of affiliates, but for all the Planned Parenthood affiliates.
This is not going to last.
The fact is that the abortion industry is dying, more and more clinics are closing – including the nation’s largest one, the Planned Parenthood mega-clinic in Houston – and its advocates are grasping at judicial straws.
In the months leading up to the glorious July 4, 2025 signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill, I was in many Congressional offices lobbying for the de-funding of Big Abortion.
An interesting pattern that many of my anti-abortion colleagues and I found was that there was hardly any lobbying on this from Planned Parenthood.
They didn’t seem to be in a panic, or deploying their supporters to stop what they are now calling “legislative punishment.”
This is probably because they knew, as we did, their very predictable game plan, that they would rely on judges to save them from the will of the people.
But that game plan is gradually losing strength, and the ultimate outcome of this de-funding battle will once again demonstrate that the judicial landscape on abortion has dramatically shifted.
The people and their elected representatives are reclaiming their right to govern themselves. And that’s our treasured “freedom of choice.”
Frank Pavone is an anti-abortion leader and national director of Priests for Life. Read Frank Pavone Reports — More Here.
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