Republicans Unlikely to ‘Defund’ Planned Parenthood Again

Planned Parenthood will likely be able to regain access to federal funds as of July 5, one year after Republicans were finally able to ban money from going to the organization.

Last year’s partisan budget bill marked the first time lawmakers succeeded in their longtime policy goal of barring Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds. The Senate parliamentarian allowed the ban to last one year, instead a proposed 10, meaning the provision will expire soon. Now, Republicans say they lack the votes to extend that ban further, a result of close margins in both chambers and election-year politics.

“I think at this point, it’d be unlikely,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), an ally to the anti-abortion movement, told NOTUS.

Daines added that Republicans would “need to find a vehicle, which would mean we’d need a third reconciliation bill, and I’d like to see a third reconciliation bill done, but I know they are hard to pass.” A reconciliation bill could move along party lines without the threat of a filibuster.

Anti-abortion groups are pressuring Republicans to pass another reconciliation bill to block future funding from the organization, even as using federal funds directly for abortion is already illegal based on the Hyde Amendment.

“Budget reconciliation remains the only viable legislative path to continuing to defund Big abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wrote in a letter to Senate Republicans last week.

Speaker Mike Johnson has said he plans to start working on a third reconciliation bill soon, but Senate Republicans aren’t as optimistic.

Already, Sens. Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins have said such a bill is not going to happen. Republicans struggled to pass the most recent reconciliation bill to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda; a third, more broad reconciliation bill might be too difficult, particularly as the midterm elections get closer.

Polling has shown that a majority of voters oppose defunding Planned Parenthood. Last year, the anti-abortion provision faced opposition from vulnerable Republicans in the House and the Senate.

Compared to the midterm elections in 2022, in the aftermath of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion is not a top issue for voters in 2026 compared to the economy and cost-of-living concers. However, it remains a polarizing issue that Republicans prefer to stay away from.

Conservative senators concede that getting their entire conference behind an anti-abortion measure is difficult.

“I don’t think Planned Parenthood should receive federal funds, but it’s very challenging,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) told NOTUS. “We’re so close to 50-50 in both chambers to get everything we, on my side of the aisle, that we want as Republicans.”

Similarly, Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) said he didn’t know if Republicans could muster the votes to extend the ban, though he added, “I would love to see that.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that while “I am certainly going to do everything I can” to cut funding from Planned Parenthood, the reconciliation route is limiting because the Senate parliamentarian has only allowed them to do so only “temporarily.”

But losing access to federal funding for just one year has led to “irreversible damage,” said Nora Walsh-DeVries, Planned Parenthood’s vice president for political and legislative affairs. By the end of 2025, 51 Planned Parenthood health centers closed as a result of the reconciliation bill.

In September 2025 alone, Planned Parenthood provided health care services at no cost to 100,000 Medicaid patients, covering an estimated $45 million in health costs, according to a March report from Senate Democrats.

“Our fantastic affiliates across the county have done so much work to still see as many patients as they can and cover the costs and make sure patients can still come at no cost to them, but that’s just not a sustainable way to operate,” Walsh-DeVries told NOTUS. “Any further defund will just continue this devastation.”

A plurality of Planned Parenthood’s revenue — nearly 40% — comes from federal funding.

While Planned Parenthood should be able to get Medicaid reimbursements again in July, there’s no clear framework for how its affiliates can obtain those funds, since they’d never been blocked before. In the year that Republicans defunded Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court also allowed states to remove the organization from their Medicaid provider programs.

Walsh-DeVries said she expects “many” Planned Parenthood affiliates to start taking Medicaid insurance, but she added that “there are states that don’t want to let that happen, regardless of what any federal law is telling them, so we’re anticipating definitely some hiccups along the way.”

Cutting funding from Planned Parenthood remains a priority for the anti-abortion movement. Students for Life Action, for example, is threatening to give all Republicans a failing grade in its legislative report card if they don’t extend the ban, and anti-abortion leaders have said that failing to go after Planned Parenthood will discourage conservatives from voting in November.

Americans’ opinions on abortion are slowly shifting. A new June Gallup poll found that the percentage of people who believe abortion should be illegal or legal in only a few circumstances has surpassed the number of people who say it should be legal in most or any circumstances, at 49% versus 48%. The poll also found that 49% of people surveyed believe abortion is “morally acceptable,” a decrease from 54% in 2024.

Still, most efforts to permanently defund Planned Parenthood fail in Congress: Stand-alone bills rarely make it out of committee, riders in appropriations bills get taken out before becoming law, and even an amendment that would have blocked the organization from receiving federal funds until 2035 failed to get attached to the second reconciliation bill.

Still, some Senate Republicans are hopeful.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) told NOTUS he would like to defund Planned Parenthood forever.

“Maybe that’s something else we can tackle in reconciliation 3.0 again,” Marshall said. “I’m optimistic.”