The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision siding with South Carolina in the case Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, allowing for states to block Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is the largest chain of abortion providers in the United States.
The majority decision was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and John Roberts.
"[P]rivate enforcement actions, meritorious or not, can force governments to direct money away from public services and spend it instead on litigation," said Gorsuch in the opinion. "The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people's elected representatives, not unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it."
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Tax dollars
Catholic and pro-life organizations were thrilled with the decision. CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt called it a "major pro-life victory."
"For too long, taxpayer dollars - including those of pro-life Americans and faithful Catholics - have been used to fund an industry built on the destruction of innocent human life," she said in a statement provided to Aleteia.
Reinhardt continued, "No one should be forced to subsidize abortion. Life is God’s most precious gift, beginning at the moment of conception and deserving of protection until natural death."
Additionally, "CatholicVote urges lawmakers to redirect support to organizations that uphold the dignity of both mother and child - especially the thousands of pregnancy resource centers that offer real help to women, without sacrificing their children or compromising their safety," she said.
Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at The Catholic Association, offered similar sentiment.
"Americans overwhelmingly do not want their tax dollars paying for abortions. But Americans have been subsidizing abortion chains like Planned Parenthood through state Medicaid dollars for decades," she said.
She continued, "Today's Supreme Court decision rightly upholds the rights of states to stop subsidizing unsafe and dirty abortion clinics where women's health and safety is jeopardized and where innocent children are killed for profit. This is a victory for life that paves the way for other states to defund Big Abortion and protect vulnerable women and babies."
Protect Medicaid
While the decision means that states can prevent Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood, Rehumanize International, a pro-life publication, warned that cutting Medicaid is not an option.
"While we applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to allow states to opt out of funding an organization that engages in the destruction of human life, we hope that legislators will act with care to ensure that women across America continue to have access to non-violent maternal and fetal healthcare," Lauren Pope, interim executive director of Rehumanize International, told Aleteia.
"To this end, we oppose any attempt to cut Medicaid for life-saving and life-giving medical care," she said.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, noted that Planned Parenthood has been besot by "revelations of botched procedures, open sewage and other horrifying conditions at their facilities across America and the tragic death of yet another young woman following a late-term abortion."
"Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded gravy train is swiftly coming to an end. Its days of posing as a ‘trusted health care provider’ are over as the truth is exposed," said Dannenfelser.
"Women, children and families deserve so much better," she said.
