Pro-Life Leaders Urge Republicans to Defund Planned Parenthood

Leading pro-life groups are urging Republican lawmakers to once again cut off Planned Parenthood from taxpayer dollars — and they’re growing concerned that their pleas are falling on deaf ears.

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The nation’s largest abortion provider has been able to collect Medicaid dollars since July 4, when a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill that defunded the group for one year expired. As budget negotiations play out on Capitol Hill, pro-life leaders held a press conference Thursday to remind lawmakers of what’s at stake.

“It was a Herculean effort to get the funding [blocked] for one year in the Big Beautiful Bill to begin with. The meetings for that effort started the Friday after the Tuesday election,” Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy at Students for Life told National Review. “One of the profound disappointments is that if the Senate would have put the House language in to sign for ten years . . . we would not be having this conversation. And we were very clear at that time, like you’re making a mistake, both politically, certainly morally, but also politically.”

Students for Life Action signed onto a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson in April of this year, months before the provision was set to expire, urging Congress to include the defunding of Planned Parenthood in the 2026 budget reconciliation package. As of now, the provision has not been included, per a budget resolution released Wednesday.

While time remains for a Planned Parenthood provision to be added, negotiations around the $95 billion budget resolution are currently dominated by the SAVE America Act — a measure to improve election security — emergency supplemental defense funding, and agricultural subsidies.

For House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R., Texas), there just wasn’t enough time to deal with Planned Parenthood this go around.

“We had the time, the luxury of time, in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, to work through that and get at least a partial win for the pro-life movement. I was very happy about that,” Arrington told the Daily Signal. “We got to a point where the clock was just, was what it was . . . I’ve been talking about this for months, and, you know, there’s just been a lot of other things . . . we as a unified Republican leadership team have had to deal with.”

But for pro-life leaders who were already critical of the administration’s positioning on abortion going into the midterms, the failure to defund Planned Parenthood would represent yet another setback.

Hearing the provision was not included in the bill this week was “extreme disappointment,” Hamrick said.

“It [the Republican Party] wasn’t a winning coalition until we looked at that pro-family, pro-life, pro-country, pro-security agenda,” Hamrick said. “But what’s interesting is the pro-life movement isn’t saying get rid of those issues to only do ours. What we’re saying is don’t neglect a foundational issue to this working coalition.”

In the letter to Thune, pro-life groups asked for a ten-year prohibition on federal funding going toward abortion, pursuant to reconciliation rules.

“Extending the prohibition for the maximum ten-year window permitted under reconciliation rules would provide long-term policy stability, protect taxpayers, and prevent future administrations from restoring funding through executive action alone,” the letter reads.

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Previously, a House version of the bill included a ten-year prohibition on Planned Parenthood receiving Medicaid reimbursements, but the time period was cut down to one year to comply with Senate rules.

Asked whether a provision defunding Planned Parenthood would be added to the reconciliation package as part of future negotiations, a spokesman for Speaker Johnson said that House Republican negotiators are focused on securing elections, supporting the military, and helping farmers. Thune’s office did not respond by the time of publication.

Planned Parenthood, according to its own annual reports, completed almost 450,000 abortions in 2024–2025. The group receives more than $830 million per year in federal funding, mainly through health programs, pro-life groups pointed out in their letter.

Andrea Trudden, vice president of communications and marketing at Heartbeat International, echoed the exhaustion the pro-life movement is feeling, given the “glacial pace” at which these safeguards and provisions are moving.

“It is definitely a tension point because again, there were so many pro-life, pro-family efforts right at the beginning of the new administration, but since then it has kind of gone quiet,” Trudden told National Review.

While dozens of Planned Parenthood locations shut down following last year’s bill, the number of abortions continues to rise, ostensibly in part from mail-order abortion drugs, another hot button issue in the pro-life movement.

Groups have expressed frustration with the Trump’s Food and Drug Administration for approving a second generic version of the abortion drug and for maintaining a Biden-era rule that eliminated in-person dispensing requirements for the drug.

Heartbeat International, a global network of life-affirming pregnancy resources, sees the harsh realities of this every day. According to Trudden, the organization has received countless calls from women who are experiencing abuse at the hands of people attempting to coerce, or even trick them, into taking abortion pills. Many women have called while hiding in their bathrooms, saying their boyfriends or parents won’t let them leave until they take the abortion pill.

“Our politicians look at the budget, and they look at what is having the most impact on families,” Trudden said. “If they are looking for a pro-family administration and a pro-family culture, then this is something that they really need to seriously look at for supporting continuously.”

For Hamrick, “we need to be a culture of life and not a federally funded, organized culture of death.”

“What I think is ironic is that we, in the pro-life movement, have to remind the GOP of this again, and on the Democratic side, they never seem to need a reminder from the abortion lobby how to how to go all in on abortion,” Hamrick said. “But we do have to often remind the GOP that they are a party of life.”

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