The Guardian
In 2004, a features editor asserted that "it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper."
In its first abortion-related case since Donald Trump retook control of the White House, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday morning in a case challenging South Carolina’s attempt to effectively “defund” Planned Parenthood because the reproductive health giant performs abortions.
The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, deals with a 2018 executive order from the South Carolina governor Henry McMaster that blocked clinics that provide abortions from receiving reimbursements via Medicaid, the US government’s healthcare program for low-income people, despite the fact that those reimbursements don’t actually cover abortions. “Payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life,” McMaster said at the time.
However, federal law bans Medicaid from covering the vast majority of abortions, which only comprised about 4% of Planned Parenthood’s activities in fiscal year 2022. Instead, people use Medicaid to cover Planned Parenthood’s other services. In the same year, the organization performed nearly half a million Pap tests and breast exams as well as 4.6m STI tests and treatments. It also provided birth control services to more than 2.2 million people.