(Oregon Right to Life) — An appeals court on Thursday lifted an earlier injunction against the Trump administration’s defunding of Planned Parenthood, freeing the Trump administration to cut federal dollars to the abortion corporation through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” budget reconciliation bill. The defunding has been expected to lead to the closure of almost 200 abortion facilities nationwide.
On September 11, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down a decision affirming that the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood by the Trump administration did not violate the Constitution. The move comes after a U.S. District judge in Boston granted a preliminary injunction pausing the defunding after Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit.
Pro-life advocates praised the decision, having previously denounced Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit as an effort to continue receiving taxpayer dollars against the will of the people.
“We are pleased the 1st Circuit has shut down Big Abortion’s desperate money grab,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “The American people, through Congress, spoke clearly with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Taxpayers should not be forced to spend a dime funding a brutal industry that ends at least 1.1 million lives a year, harms women while providing dwindling, substandard health care services, and engages in partisan political activism – especially when more accessible, more comprehensive options outnumber Planned Parenthoods 15 to 1.”
“We are confident the Trump administration will prevail against the abortion industry’s lawfare,” Dannenfelser said.
“This ruling is a victory for unborn children and for taxpayers,” National Right to Life president Carol Tobias said in a Thursday statement. “No organization has a constitutional right to federal funds—especially when those funds enable the taking of innocent human life. With this decision, the courts respect the will of the people, through their elected representatives, that taxpayer dollars should not support an industry built on taking the lives of unborn babies.”
As Oregon Right to Life previously reported, the Republican-led U.S. Congress passed the “Big Beautiful Bill” July 3, officially approving a provision cutting federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood for a year and sending the bill to President Trump’s desk for a signature.
Trump signed the measure on July 4.
The official passage came after lengthy and contentious debate, with the U.S. Senate approving the bill in a narrow 51–50 vote (Vice President J.D. Vance acting as tie-breaker) in the Senate vote. The bill then returned to the U.S. House of Representatives, where it passed in a 218-214 vote on the afternoon of July 3, just before the intended July 4 cut-off.
The bill had undergone numerous revisions in both chambers of Congress prior to its passage. Significantly, an earlier provision to strip taxpayer dollars from Planned Parenthood for a decade was reduced to a single year in the Senate shortly before its final passage. Despite the changes, the surviving version of the bill still cut funding to the abortion giant.
Days later, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in an effort to prevent enforcement of the bill’s provision stripping away its federal funding.
READ: Pro-Life Groups Blast ‘Desperate’ Planned Parenthood Lawsuit Attempting to Stop Federal Defunding
“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood argued in its July 7 filing.
According to its official 2023–2024 report, Planned Parenthood brought in more than $2 billion in revenue during the year, $792.2 million (39%) of which came from the federal government. During the same period, the abortion giant reported performing a record 402,230 abortions. A 2025 Knights of Columbus-Marist poll found that 57% of respondents across political divides disagreed with using taxpayer dollars to finance abortion.
On the same day Planned Parenthood filed its lawsuit, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts granted Planned Parenthood its requested restraining order, pausing enforcement of the federal defunding for two weeks.
Despite the legal challenge, the Trump administration stood by the defunding of the abortion giant.
“The Trump Administration is ending the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion – a commonsense position that the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with,” a White House official told CBS at the time.
The defunding of Planned Parenthood is anticipated to lead to the shuttering of roughly 200 abortion facilities in 24 states nationwide – most of them closing in states where abortion is presently legal. The change will compound the existing number of abortion facilities that have been rapidly closing their doors in recent years.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported that the number of brick-and-mortar abortion facilities has dropped by 5% between 2020 and March 2024, “a net loss of 42 clinics.” That decline has been partially caused by state pro-life laws passed after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
