Pennsylvania court overturns limits on Medicaid coverage for abortions

A Pennsylvania court on Monday said the state constitution guarantees the right to an abortion, striking down a decades-old law that prohibited the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortion costs.

The decision by the appellate Commonwealth Court’s split seven-judge panel is a major victory for Planned Parenthood and abortion clinic operators, who first sued Pennsylvania over its Medicaid funding restrictions. in 2019.

While the case initially focused on the state’s Medicaid restrictions, the stakes rose significantly after the U.S. Supreme Court ended nearly half a century of federal abortion protections in 2022. Roe v. Wade’s degradation.

The court’s decision on Monday marks the first time that the right to an abortion is protected by Pennsylvania’s constitution, joining a handful of states where reproductive rights advocates have had success protecting access to abortion by pointing to state constitutions.

It is stated that the case may still be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

“Today, our Commonwealth Court decided, looking at the Pennsylvania constitution, that there is a right to reproductive autonomy, and that is the right to the highest degree possible,” said Susan Frietsche, executive director of the Women’s Law Project, which helped represent the clinics.

A spokesman for Republican Attorney General David Sunday said the office was reviewing the decision and did not say whether it would appeal.

Democrats publicly praised the decision, as did abortion rights advocates.

“I have long opposed this unconstitutional ban and did not defend it as Governor because a woman’s ability to access reproductive care should never be determined by her income,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement.

State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, the likely Republican candidate who could challenge Shapiro in the fall general election, said in a statement that the court’s “decision to force our tax dollars to pay for abortions is not only misguided but immoral.”

In 2019, plaintiffs asked the court to order the state’s Medicaid program to begin covering abortion without restriction, arguing that a 1982 Pennsylvania law restricting the state’s Medicaid funding violated low-income women’s constitutional equal protection rights.

The case has changed several times since then, By a lower court decision in 2021 He said the plaintiffs lacked legal standing and were bound by the state Supreme Court’s 1985 decision upholding the 1982 law.

However, in 2024 the state The Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision and also determined that prior court decisions did not fully consider the scope of state constitutional protections against discrimination beyond those provided by the federal constitution.

The seven judges on the lower court hearing the case largely sided with the plaintiffs on Monday. The majority opinion said that if women should carry a pregnancy to term, the state should invest in maternal and infant health services and other resources.

The attorney general’s office had argued that the state had an interest in “protecting fetal life” and that excluding Medicaid coverage helped support that goal.

The majority opinion stated, “If the state believes that certain medical procedures may psychologically harm women, the state may license, regulate, and train such care. This is less intrusive than categorically taking the entire medical procedure off the table for some women, some of whom may benefit from the procedure—a fact that the Attorney General did not dispute.” said the majority.

Abortion opponents were quick to criticize Monday’s decision.

“By declaring a sweeping constitutional ‘right to reproductive autonomy’ and mandating taxpayer-funded abortion through Medicaid, the Court overstepped its authority, ignored the plain text of our state constitution, and forced millions of Pennsylvanians who believe life begins at conception to subsidize the murder of unborn children,” said Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which opposes abortion rights.

According to state law in Pennsylvania, abortion is legal up to the 23rd week of pregnancy.