Former HELP Chair Murray has successfully beaten back Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood going back decades
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement on House Republicans’ actions to undermine access to quality health coverage, including through provisions to “defund” Planned Parenthood and make deep cuts to Medicaid in their reconciliation bill that would result in at least 13.7 million people losing health insurance by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Republicans are aiming to enact their legislation via the budget reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority to pass each chamber of Congress.
“Defunding Planned Parenthood means ripping away millions of people’s ability to get cancer screenings, birth control, and lifesaving reproductive health care. Despite what Republicans try to claim, women cannot just ‘go somewhere else’ if Planned Parenthood shuts down—Planned Parenthood provides care to more than 2 million people every single year and for many people, those centers are their only source of health care. Defunding Planned Parenthood is defunding basic health care.
“Americans have made clear time and again that they do not want politicians interfering in their health care—but Republicans are so hell-bent on ripping away reproductive freedom at any cost that they are refusing to listen to their own constituents. House Republicans’ attack on Planned Parenthood is part of their catastrophic proposal to pass the largest Medicaid cut in history, kick nearly 14 million Americans off their health insurance, and raise health care premiums on millions of Americans—all to create room in the budget to pass more tax cuts for billionaires.
“Republicans tried and failed to defund Planned Parenthood in their last reconciliation bill and you can be sure that Democrats will be fighting with everything we’ve got to stop Republicans from ripping away access to care through Planned Parenthood this time around.”
Senator Murray is a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights and is widely credited with holding the line against any budget deal that would cut funding for Planned Parenthood in 2011 and leading the fight to uphold President Obama’s policy requiring insurers to cover birth control as part of the Affordable Care Act. Murray has led Congressional efforts to fight back after the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade, introducing more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; Murray has led efforts to push for passage of these bills on the floor multiple times. Last year, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Murray led her colleagues in hosting a “State of Abortion Rights” briefing with women who have suffered firsthand from Republican abortion bans, and last June, she chaired a HELP Committee hearing titled “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America.” Murray helped lead efforts to force Republicans on the record on votes to protect access to contraception and access to IVF (twice), and led her colleagues in raising the alarm about the threat a second Trump administration poses to reproductive rights and abortion access in every state, as outlined in Project 2025.
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