SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A year ago today, Republican lawmakers passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and accomplished a longtime goal of anti-abortion-rights activists, is how Speaker Mike Johnson told the March For Life rally earlier this year.
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MIKE JOHNSON: For the first time ever, we finally defunded big abortion, and it was a long time coming.
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SIMON: But the defunding provision was only for a single year due to a quirk of Senate rules. As NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin reports, that year is up.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: The way the law was written, only three large healthcare providers were affected - Planned Parenthood, Health Imperatives in Massachusetts and Maine Family Planning, which I reported on last fall, visiting a clinic in Thomaston on the coast.
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VANESSA SHIELDS-HAAS: This is our larger exam room.
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SHIELDS-HAAS: Here we do most of our yearly wellness visits.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Nurse Practitioner Vanessa Shields-Haas told me that half of the organization's patients are on Medicaid, and they come to her for all sorts of things.
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SHIELDS-HAAS: I can treat your tick bite or your bronchitis. I tell people if you cut your finger off or you're having a heart attack, I'm going to send you to the emergency room, but there's a lot of many other things that can be treated here. And because...
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Medicaid already doesn't cover abortion because of the Hyde Amendment from the 1970s. But normally, any of these other services, plus cancer screenings and STI tests, could be billed to Medicaid until the defund provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect.
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SHIELDS-HAAS: We've been seeing all of those patients for free. We haven't been turning them away.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: When I called spokesperson Olivia Pennington of Maine Family Planning this week, I asked how they had weathered the year.
OLIVIA PENNINGTON: I mean, it's been devastating to see this defund and to see the impacts that it's had across the nation.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Planned Parenthood published a report this week showing that 20 of their clinics across the country closed since defunding. In Maine, they ended primary care at three clinics and lost four employees. Pennington says a few other providers left because they were nervous about their job security. But none of their 18 clinics closed. The state helped fill the federal funding gap, and even though patients were confused by the funding news, they kept coming.
PENNINGTON: We are really proud of the tenacity at Maine Family Planning and our commitment to ensuring that Mainers will continue to access healthcare no matter what comes at us.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: There was pressure on congressional Republicans to extend the defund provision from anti-abortion groups, but with slim majorities and many other priorities, it didn't happen before Congress went on recess. Pennington says next week, with defunding over, Maine Family Planning will start billing Medicaid again. At the same time, they're nervous about potential cuts to federal grants for reproductive health from the Trump administration and more.
PENNINGTON: We are going to see political attacks, and we are always going to be ready to see them.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: She says they're dedicated to finding creative solutions to keep their doors open because they know that Mainers need them.
Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPARKY DEATHCAP SONG, "SEPTEMBER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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