The US Supreme Court has paved the way for states to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, one of the country’s largest abortion providers, by ruling South Carolina can effectively defund the service.

Planned Parenthood, which provides a wide range of reproductive health services across the US, is already barred from receiving federal money for abortion care.

This latest ruling, supported by six of the Supreme Court’s nine judges, allows South Carolina, and potentially other states who may wish to follow suit, to cut off reimbursements to the healthcare provider for low-income Americans who access care through a US government healthcare scheme known as Medicaid.

The case stems from an executive order issued by South Carolina’s Republican governor Henry McMaster in 2018 cutting off Medicaid funding to the two Planned Parenthood clinics in the state.

Support among the Supreme Court justices was split down ideological lines. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)

The Medicaid reimbursements were not abortion-related, but Mr McMaster said providing any funding to Planned Parenthood amounts to a taxpayer “subsidy of abortion”, which is banned in South Carolina for women who are more than six weeks pregnant.

Both Planned Parenthood and a South Carolina woman suffering from diabetes later launched a legal challenge, arguing that Medicaid patients have the right to receive care from any qualified provider.

An appeals court later overturned the executive order, before the state escalated the legal fight to the Supreme Court.

Decision to cause ‘tangible harm’

Thursday’s verdict was split down ideological lines, with conservatives holding a 6-3 majority in the US’s most powerful court.

The court ruled that a Medicaid patient cannot sue the state to receive medical care from a provider of their choosing.

Republican states have sought to significantly cut access to abortion since the overturning of Roe v Wade. (AP: Charlie Riedel )

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent joined by the two other liberal justices, disagreed.

“Congress enacted the Medicaid Act’s free-choice-of-provider provision to ensure that Medicaid recipients have the right to choose their own doctors,” Ms Jackson said.

“Today’s decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people.”

Latest victory for anti-abortion groups

The Supreme Court ruling was welcomed by the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, which called it a “major win for babies and their mothers.”

It clears the way for South Carolina and other states “to stop funding big abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood in their Medicaid programs,” it said on X.

Paige Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, called the ruling a “grave injustice” and said it “promises to send South Carolina deeper into a healthcare crisis.”

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established federal protections for abortion access, in June 2022.

Since then, more than 20 of the 50 US states have imposed strict limits on abortion, or even outright bans.

AP