Trump’s Budget Law Will Wreck Reproductive Health Care for Millions

If clinics are closed in states where abortion is legal, it would also make it more difficult for out-of-state patients traveling to seek an abortion to obtain that procedure. “It would flatten out the differences between states, and also put a lot more pressure and challenge on places that remain open, because they’d be serving even more people as the population of clinics declines,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and an expert on abortion law and history.

Another element of uncertainty lies in timing. Because the provision is written to be in effect for one year, it would need to be extended by Congress for it to continue to be in effect. “There may be various Band-Aids and stopgaps that people can use to cover the difference in the short term, but that would not work or be sustainable in the longer term, so that’s another wild card,” continued Ziegler. For example, while donors could step in to help defray costs and alleviate funding shortfalls to cover immediate needs, those funding streams may not be tenable over the long term; moreover, it would put pressure on abortion and reproductive health care funds intended to assist low-income patients in receiving care that might otherwise be too expensive.

A June report by the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank focused on reproductive rights, found that other federally qualified health centers would not be able to easily replace the care currently provided by Planned Parenthood affiliates. In 2020, Planned Parenthood served roughly one-third of the contraceptive clients that visited family planning centers funded through the social safety net. If Planned Parenthood were to be excluded from Medicaid reimbursement, Guttmacher found that federally qualified health centers would need to increase their capacity to provide contraceptive care by 56 percent.