Supreme Court Wades Into South Carolina Fight Over Abortion, Funding to Planned Parenthood

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up yet another case that could have a direct impact on abortion access in America, this time in a matter out of South Carolina where the state’s health department is going head to head with a patient who claims a recent Republican-led push to cut off Planned Parenthood funding violates her right to choose a health care provider under federal law.

Kerr v. Edwards originates from a Medicare funding dispute over abortion that began in 2018. That year, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) ordered the state’s health department to declare that institutions like Planned Parenthood, because they provide abortions, were no longer entitled to public funding through Medicaid.

A protracted legal battle ensued when Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and patient Julie Edwards launched a lawsuit against the state, saying that existing federal law already bars Medicaid from paying, or reimbursing Planned Parenthood, for abortions (with some exceptions for rape and incest). And further, they pointed out that Planned Parenthood renders services to Medicaid recipients in South Carolina just like Edwards besides abortion.

Medicaid patients, who are usually low-income, are among the people who go to Planned Parenthood to get access to a wide variety of health care services including critical cancer screenings, STD or STI testing and contraceptive access, they noted.

Edwards and Planned Parenthood South Atlantic contend that the Medicaid Act spells out clearly that patients on Medicaid have the right to choose a qualified health care provider. The law also says patients can sue when that right is infringed on.

This is not the first time the question in South Carolina has been presented to the Supreme Court.

In 2019, Edwards sued South Carolina and won; the state appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked the state’s directive. The appellate court ruled that the prohibition on Planned Parenthood and Edwards directly impacted Planned Parenthood’s existing legal agreement to provide services to Medicaid patients who show up at its doorstep.

Planned Parenthood argued that the organization had to turn patients away as a result of McMaster’s directive.

In his opinion siding with Edwards and Planned Parenthood, Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson reminded the state that the text of Medicaid’s free-choice-of-provider provision made it plain: Medicaid recipients “may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the services required … who undertakes to provide him such services.”

South Carolina responded in an appeal to the Supreme Court and argued that it’s not up to Medicaid recipients to challenge South Carolina’s declarations on whether a certain provider is eligible to provide medical services.

South Carolina Health and Human Services Director Robert Kerr wanted the Supreme Court to reverse the 4th Circuit’s ruling.

According to the petition granting the case review on Wednesday, the justices will only answer one question in the case: Whether the Medicaid Act’s “any qualified provider provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.”

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, South Carolina has banned abortions after roughly six weeks. Some Republicans in the state legislature prefiled a bill last week that would define abortion as homicide and make it a crime punishable by the death penalty.