Anti-Abortion Leaders Are Pressuring Republicans to Defund Planned Parenthood in Reconciliation

President Donald Trump’s so-called “one big, beautiful bill” granted the anti-abortion movement one of its biggest priorities: severely restricting federal funding from going to abortion providers.

As congressional Republicans prepare to start the budget reconciliation process for a second time to fund the president’s immigration agenda, anti-abortion leaders are hoping it’s an opportunity to extend their push to effectively defund Planned Parenthood for longer.

Last year’s reconciliation bill initially attempted to bar federal funding from going to abortion providers for 10 years. After the Senate parliamentarian effectively disqualified that duration, Republicans were successful in defunding for one year, which has led to multiple Planned Parenthood clinic closures. With the measure running out in July, anti-abortion advocates are exerting pressure on GOP leaders.

Anti-abortion advocates have been frustrated with the Trump administration over its lack of action to restrict abortion nationwide. If Republicans fail to add a provision defunding Planned Parenthood to a second reconciliation bill, some advocates say the party could risk losing conservative voters in November.

“The failure to act on the pro-life issue does risk the block,” Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life Action, told NOTUS. “Former President Reagan described the Republican Party as a three-legged stool: One leg is social conservatives, one leg is national-security conservatives and one leg is economic conservatives.”

“You don’t see the people who want to see more military spending or support a flat tax out there door knocking. The social conservatives really are the ground game of the Republican Party, and that means pro-life, that means pro-family, that means pro-support for children. That’s the kind of thing that people are looking for,” Hamrick continued.

Jennie Bradley Lichter, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, says her group’s “top priority, along with the whole movement, for reconciliation is getting that bar of federal funding flowing to abortion clinics back in place and extending it so that this doesn’t become something that needs to be redone every year.” She added, “Finding a path to having it be a multiyear ‘defund’ is our top priority for reconciliation.”

March for Life Action, the organization’s political arm, is focused on activating its grassroots network to pressure Republicans to support defunding Planned Parenthood. Lichter also said that the organization is “very engaged and very active” in conversing with Republicans on Capitol Hill, though she declined to name which members she has met with on the issue.

As Republicans figure out how to end the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown, they’re looking to the reconciliation process, a party-line vote that gets around the Senate filibuster, to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After the Washington Examiner reported last Tuesday that Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime ally to the anti-abortion movement, was not considering language to defund Planned Parenthood and other large abortion providers in the budget bill, some anti-abotion leaders were quick to express their frustrations.

John Mize, CEO of Americans United for Life, quickly set up a phone meeting with Johnson’s staff on Wednesday afternoon. He told NOTUS ahead of the call that Planned Parenthood is a “wounded dog.”

“They’re a desperate organization. I think you defund them for one more year and, I mean, at some level, it will tip and they will completely fall by the wayside,” Mize said. “This is our shot, this upcoming reconciliation bill.”

Following the meeting, Johnson’s team was not shutting down the idea of using the reconciliation process to extend current abortion restrictions.

“Our team understands negotiations are ongoing and nothing is confirmed yet. The bottom line is that defunding has not been excluded at this point in time,” Mize said in a statement recounting the meeting. “We continue to hope and expect that Leader Thune, Speaker Johnson, and Congressional Republicans will successfully get defunding through the finish line.”

But GOP leaders want to keep this reconciliation bill as specific as possible. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told NOTUS’ Al Weaver last week that his goal was to keep a second reconciliation bill narrow and focused solely on DHS.

“Once you start widening it out and implicate other committees of jurisdiction, then … you get a lot of germaneness issues on the floor when it comes to amendments,” Thune said. “The goal is, and I think a lot of it will depend on the degree to which the White House is leaning in on this too, to make sure that it remains a narrow fix.”

Johnson is seemingly resigned to Thune’s demands. Nearly one week after his office met with Mize, when asked if it was possible to defund Planned Parenthood in this reconciliation package, the speaker told NOTUS, “The reconciliation bill that’s coming over is super skinny, they call it. It’s ICE and Border, and we’re going to deal with everything else going forward.”

With that, some Republicans have floated the idea of a third reconciliation bill that would address more ideological concerns, like adding new requirements for voting, which defunding Planned Parenthood could be added to. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee and an anti-abortion ally, shut down the idea of adding the anti-abortion clause to the upcoming package, telling NOTUS, “We’ll do that for sure in the next bill.”

“My goal right now is to get the Border Patrol and ICE funded through the rest of President Trump’s term,” he said.

Similarly, Sen. Bernie Moreno, a member of the Budget Committee, told NOTUS that Senate Republicans would not add the provision because it “makes it a much more complicated reconciliation process in this package.”

“We could do a third reconciliation bill that’s a little bit meatier,” Moreno added.

Adding more ideological measures to the second reconciliation bill could also risk losing some Republican support, something leaders are worried about with a tiny House majority. Rep. Mike Lawler, a vulnerable Republican from New York who has previously opposed defunding Planned Parenthood, told NOTUS that Congress needed to focus on using “the reconciliation process to fund ICE and CBP.”

“We should stick to that and get it done,” Lawler continued.

As the midterm elections get closer, some lawmakers are doubtful that a third reconciliation legislation could actually happen. When asked whether she thought it was possible to defund abortion providers in such a bill, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said, “A third? We got to get this one first. Who knows.”

Rep. August Pfluger, the chair of the Republican Study Committee, which released its own framework in January for a second large reconciliation bill that included defunding Planned Parenthood, told NOTUS that the ICE package is a “very different thing than what we advocated for” so his group is “going to continue to advocate for a third reconciliation.”

But he conceded that it would be difficult for that to happen the closer November gets: “That’s a political reality,” Pfluger said.

Anti-abortion advocates are also skeptical that their priorities would be addressed in a third reconciliation bill.

“There’s not a planet where a third reconciliation is going to happen. They’re in election season, that’s a fantasy,” Mize told NOTUS. So the next reconciliation bill “is the one shot we have to defund for a second time,” he added.

In a statement to NOTUS, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, said that “despite the devastating consequences, Republican lawmakers have continued to make it clear that their goal is to permanently ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood.”

“Until more than one million Planned Parenthood health center patients are no longer at risk of losing access to cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and other critical services, this fight is not over,” Johnson continued.

A report released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in March found that since the “one big, beautiful bill” took effect last year, at least 23 Planned Parenthood clinics have closed, and 75% of those were in “rural, medically underserved areas, or health professional shortage areas.”

Anti-abortion advocates have at least one ally in Congress pushing for leaders to include a clause defunding Planned Parenthood into the DHS funding bill. Rep. Chris Smith, a chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, told NOTUS he’s in “ongoing” conversations with House GOP leaders on the issue, but they didn’t say “yes or no” on whether they’d push for the measure to be added.

“It would be a profoundly missed opportunity” if Republicans fail to do so, Smith, who said he’s not sure whether there will be another reconciliation opportunity, added.

Hamrick agrees, telling NOTUS, “GOP voters, social conservatives have every right to expect that the Republicans will finish what they started.”

NOTUS Reporter Al Weaver contributed to this story