(Oregon Right to Life) — Pro-life Oregon lawmakers came out strongly this week against a move by House and Senate Democrats to appropriate millions in state taxpayer dollars to fund Oregon’s Planned Parenthood facilities in the wake of federal cuts.
The Oregon legislature’s Emergency Board on Tuesday approved a $7.5 million appropriation of emergency state funding to buoy Oregon’s Planned Parenthood facilities, which have been impacted by the July federal budget bill blocking federal taxpayer dollars to the abortion giant for a year. Pro-abortion lawmakers in Oregon responded to the defunding by vowing to approve additional state funding to backfill the lost revenue.
Tuesday’s funding comes in addition to $10 million already granted during the 2025 legislative session (HB 5025). However, according to The Lund Report, the federal defunding has forced Oregon affiliates to “dip into their savings.”
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Proponents of the appropriation argued on Tuesday that the funding was necessary to preserve access to the non-abortion services Planned Parenthood provides. The claims come in spite of the fact that Planned Parenthood is primarily an abortion provider, and that it lost federal funding because it provides elective abortions, not its non-abortion services.
Ashley Thirstrup, Chief of Staff and External Relations Division Director at Oregon Health Authority, told lawmakers that Planned Parenthood provides “a lot of different reproductive health services,” arguing that “probably all of them are life-saving.” She added that there are “deep concerns that without the Planned Parenthood clinic system, we will not be able to absorb” the needs of Oregonians statewide.
Pro-life lawmakers, however, pointed out that the non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood are already available at the 270 Federally Qualified Health Clinics (FQHCs) and 16 Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) across the state. FQHCs outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities more than 20-1 in Oregon.
Republican Senator Fred Girod called the framing of the funding request, which emphasized Planned Parenthood’s small number of non-abortion services “a sleight of hand.”
“You’re funding something that you know is going to sound good to the public, but they can take money off the top to fund what’s controversial,” he said. “I’m going to be an adamant no.”
From 2021-2025, Planned Parenthood facilities in Oregon performed 20,213 (about 55%) of the state’s abortions, most of them funded by Oregon Health Plan, Oregon’s Medicaid program. In total, 80.75% of Oregon’s abortion procedures were paid for using state tax dollars during that period. That’s in spite of recent national polling suggesting that a majority of respondents on both sides of the political aisle (53%) opposed the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions.
READ: Oregon Planned Parenthood Facilities Running Out of Money After Federal Defunding
The data show that Planned Parenthood’s primary business is abortion, providing only a small percentage of non-abortion services nationwide.
No Planned Parenthood in Oregon or anywhere else in the country offers mammograms, and affiliates only provide an estimated 1% of the nation’s pap tests and less than 2% of its HPV tests while routinely carrying out an outsized percentage of abortions. In 2022-2023, Planned Parenthood facilities performed a record 402,230 abortions nationwide, approximately 40% of all abortions performed in the U.S. Abortions make up over 95% of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy resolution services across the country, according to the organization’s annual reports. No Oregon Planned Parenthood affiliate offers prenatal care. What could be referred to as actual life-saving care provided by Planned Parenthood, such as breast and cervical cancer screening and STI testing, are already provided by myriad medical facilities in Oregon and nationwide.
The most common non-abortion service provided by Planned Parenthood facilities – contraception – is accessible through a wide variety of sources, including but not limited to federally qualified health centers across Oregon. While a recent analysis by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute suggested that FQHCs would be incapable of managing the influx of patients seeking contraception if Planned Parenthood lost Medicaid dollars, the demand would not fall solely on FQHCs but would be distributed across a wide variety of providers. County-funded clinics, third-party walk-in clinics, and even retail pharmacies already offer contraception, even offering same-day delivery through their online platforms.
In a Tuesday statement, House Minority Leader Lucetta Elmer condemned the allocation of emergency funds to support Planned Parenthood.
“Given the availability and access to other clinics that provide reproductive health care services and Oregon’s strained financial climate, using emergency funding for Planned Parenthood is neither urgent nor necessary,” Elmer said. “We need to stop the political posturing and get back to listening to what Oregonians want – and use their tax dollars accordingly.”
Lois Anderson, Executive Director of Oregon Right to Life, also blasted the move, emphasizing that Planned Parenthood lost its federal funding because of abortion, not critical health care services.
“The only reason Planned Parenthood is being stripped of federal funding right now is because of abortion. If their primary reason for existence was not ending the lives of unique, developing human beings we would not be having this conversation,” Anderson said Wednesday. “Backers of Planned Parenthood can try to argue that its abortion facilities are needed providers of legitimately life-saving care, but many other clinics are currently filling those needs, including for rural and low-income families.”
“This is a moment where our legislature should be directing emergency dollars to support the work of the many clinics, organizations, and individual health care providers who provide comprehensive, life-affirming care for women and their babies,” she said. “Instead, Oregon Democrats are once again funneling taxpayer dollars to fuel America’s biggest abortion corporation and score political points.”
