(Washington) A divided US Supreme Court authorized States to remove the financing of the Medicaid health insurance program to the family planned Planned Parenthood, in a judgment rendered on Thursday.
This decision occurs within the framework of a wider campaign supported by the Republicans aimed at removing the funding of the largest abortions in the country.
The opinion, rendered with six votes against three, intervenes in a case which did not directly concern abortion. Rather, it is Medicaid funding of other health services provided by Planned Parenthood, such as contraception, cancer screening and pregnancy tests.
The judgment, written by judge Neil Gorsuch and supported by the other conservative judges of the Court, could have wider consequences for Medicaid patients, because he prevents them from initiating prosecution to ensure that they can consult the service provider of their choice.
Public health care money generally cannot be used to finance abortions. Medicaid patients consult Planned Parenthood for other needs, in particular because it can be difficult to find a doctor accepting public health insurance, the organization said.
Southern Carolina Republican Governor Henry McMaster said that taxpayers’ money should not be paid to the organization.
The budget bill supported by President Donald Trump at the Congress would also reduce the funding of Medicaid to Planned Parenthood. This could lead to the closure of around 200 centers, most of them in states where abortion is legal, said the organization.
Governor McMaster had initially attempted to remove the funding from Medicaid to Planned Parenthood in 2018, but his request was blocked by the courts following a complaint filed by a patient appointed Julie Edwards.
Wishing to continue to use it for contraception, her diabetes making pregnancy potentially dangerous, Mme Edwards brought legal action due to a provision of the Medicaid law which allows patients to choose their own qualified provider.
South Carolina, however, argued that patients should not be able to bring such actions. The state cited lower courts which were influenced by similar arguments and which allowed states such as Texas to block the funding of Medicaid at Planned Parenthood.
The majority of the Supreme Court agreed. “Decide whether or not to authorize the private application of the law asks delicate political questions involving competing costs and advantages; Decisions that come under elected officials, not judges, “wrote Judge Gorsuch.
In a dissident opinion, joined by her liberal colleagues, judge Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that the decision was “likely to lead to tangible damage to real people”.
“It would deprive the inhabitants of Southern Carolina-and countless other beneficiaries of Medicaid across the country-of a deeply personal freedom: the ability to decide that treats them in our most vulnerable moments,” she wrote.
Public health groups such as American Cancer Society declared in legal documents that legal proceedings were the only real way for Medicaid patients to assert their right to choose their own doctor.
The loss of this right would reduce access to health care for beneficiaries of the program, who would represent a quarter of the country’s population. The rural areas could be particularly affected, the defenders of rights said in court documents.
In South Carolina, US $ 90,000 of funding in Medicaid is paid each year to Planned Parenthood, a tiny part of the total state Medicaid spending. The state prohibited abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy after the Supreme Court invalidated it as a national law in 2022.
The state maintains that other providers can fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of MEDICAIDI PLANNED PLANNED.
