S.C. effort to defund Planned Parenthood to come before US Supreme Court next week

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - South Carolina will soon be front and center once again before the US Supreme Court.

Justices for the nation’s highest court will hear arguments next Wednesday in a case challenging the state’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services.

The case started with an executive order Gov. Henry McMaster issued in 2018, prohibiting Planned Parenthood from participating in the state’s Medicaid program for services besides abortions, which federal law already bars from being funded through Medicaid.

“This case is not about abortion,” Planned Parenthood Senior Staff Attorney Catherine Peyton Humphreville said. “Excluding Planned Parenthood from Medicaid means that patients can’t see their trusted provided for birth control, STI testing and treatment, annual exams, cancer screenings, and more.”

The question that will be before the court is whether Medicaid recipients can sue, as one did in this case, to select the qualified provider they want.

“Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to fund facilities that choose to profit off abortion, and South Carolina is free to use its limited funding to subsidize life-affirming healthcare,” Alliance Defending Freedom Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch said last December, after the Supreme Court announced it would take up the case. ADF is representing South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, which manages the state’s Medicaid program, pro bono in the case.

But Planned Parenthood said its clinics are sometimes the only option for South Carolinians seeking reproductive healthcare, especially those with lower incomes.

“Many providers across the state either do not accept Medicaid patients or strictly limit the number of Medicaid patients they accept,” Dr. Katherine Farris, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s chief medical officer, said. “This case will ultimately affect people who already struggle to afford basic healthcare in places where it’s already hard to get.”

Lower courts have sided with Planned Parenthood in this case, allowing its clinics in Columbia and Charleston to keep accepting Medicaid patients.

But other states have faced similar challenges, and federal appeals courts are split on the issue, which attorneys representing the State of South Carolina said needs to be settled.

“The Supreme Court is in the business of making sure that federal statutes like the Medicaid Act apply universally across the country and that the rights are not different depending on the state where you happen to live, and so I think it was time for them to resolve this,” Bursch said.

McMaster claims that money that goes to Planned Parenthood will end up paying for abortions, so state dollars should not fund the organization.

“There are plenty of good organizations that provide maternal health, advice, counseling, care, and we need more of those, and we need those kind of counselors,” McMaster told reporters this week. “But I’m confident, from over the years, that the people of this state do not want their tax money going for abortions.”

On a press call Friday, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic explained that Medicaid reimburses them for providing specific services, which, by law, cannot include abortions.

“And Medicaid, as a general rule, reimburses far less than other insurance providers, which means often the money we get back for the service we have provided doesn’t even cover that service. There is no way it is going on to other services like abortion,” Farris said.

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