OPINION:
The midterm elections are fast approaching, and congressional Republicans are busy funding their own political demise.
On the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which affirms each person’s unalienable right to “life,” our nation’s largest violator of that right, Planned Parenthood, once again began receiving millions of taxpayer dollars.
On July 4, a one-year provision (Section 71113) banning federal Medicaid funding of abortion providers, enacted as a part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, expired.
Just days later, Planned Parenthood Votes, the abortion giant’s super PAC, announced it would spend $47 million to defeat Republicans in the midterm elections, targeting Republicans in 10 battleground House races and in Maine and Michigan’s Senate contests.
Sarah Standiford, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, vowed the organization would do everything in its power to “make sure members of Congress who voted against Planned Parenthood lose their jobs.”
A separate group, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the abortion organization’s 501(c)(4) political advocacy arm, is spending $3.5 million across Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and other states to defeat House Republicans who voted for H.R. 1.
Other anti-life groups not directly affiliated with Planned Parenthood are pouring tens of millions more dollars into the midterms. Reproductive Freedom For All is spending at least $23.5 million, and EMILYs List is pouring in $15 million to elect “Democratic pro-choice women.”
It is a massive investment by anti-life groups. Should the strategy work, it will be well worth the cost.
Planned Parenthood performed 434,450 abortions in one year, according to the group’s 2024-2025 annual report. That was an 8% year-over-year increase. The organization earned more than $2.1 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 2025.
Of that, $832 million came from government reimbursements and grants. All of it was before the organization’s defunding.
Minutes after Section 71113 expired, Planned Parenthood affiliates began notifying clients that they could again accept Medicaid for Planned Parenthood services, sparking an infusion of cash for which the abortion organization was desperate.
In 2025, Planned Parenthood reported $2.143 billion in revenue and $2.172 billion in expenses, a $29.3 million loss in the year before its defunding. Coupled with Section 71113, the defunding forced Planned Parenthood to close more than 50 clinics last year.
With $3.111 billion in total assets, the organization weathered the temporary financial hit with help from blue states, which provided at least $202.5 million in supplemental funding.
Before it fell on hard times, Planned Parenthood raked in a $206 million profit from 2022 to 2024.
It is utterly inexcusable for congressional Republicans to gift Planned Parenthood a financial lifeline, especially as the group’s political allies spend millions of dollars to ensure those same Republicans lose their jobs.
Republicans can use the reconciliation process three times per Congress under current budget rules to pass budget-related items and bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. So far, reconciliation has been used twice: once to pass H.R. 1 and once to pass the Secure America Act, providing an additional $70 billion for immigration enforcement.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus, in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, called for a reconciliation 3.0 bill that extends H.R. 1’s “prohibition of federal funding for abortion providers to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to subsidize the radical abortion industry.”
To his credit, Mr. Johnson is moving forward with a third bill that will be “irresistible” to Republican lawmakers to “increase affordability, reduce fraud, waste and abuse in government, and secure our elections.”
Conservative voters must demand that Reconciliation 3.0 include an extension of Section 71113.
Some Senate Republicans “are cooler to the idea of a third reconciliation bill” because of a “general reluctance … to start an abortion fight so close to the midterms,” according to The Hill.
That political calculus is exactly wrong. Midterm elections are famously low-turnout affairs, making base turnout even more important. It does not take Karl Rove to realize that depressing your base by funding an abortion empire, while gifting your opponent hundreds of millions of dollars, is a recipe for electoral disaster.
Every Republican should vote for a third reconciliation bill that includes another one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood — if not out of principle, then at least out of political self-interest.
• Zachary Mettler serves as a senior writer and issues analyst for The Daily Citizen at Focus on the Family.
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