A Planned Parenthood Clinic in downtown Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is restarting abortion services after a nearly month-long pause due to a federal budget and tax law that threatens to withhold Medicaid funding from organizations that provide abortion services.

The organization paused services on Oct. 1, due to a provision in the federal megabill signed by President Donald Trump that bars Medicaid payments for one year to organizations that received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2023 and primarily engage in family planning services and reproductive health and provide abortions. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin had said the pause was temporary as they explored options for being able to resume. 

The federal Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal funds from being used to pay for most abortion care for nearly five decades, but the new provision, which expires in July 2026, expands that prohibition to cover all Medicaid-covered services at clinics that also provide non-covered abortions. 

“Providing compassionate, high-quality care to our patients has always been our mission — and it always will be,” President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said in a statement. “At a time when politicians are working to take away health care from women and families, we are fighting back with everything we have. We’ve been here before. We’ve stood up to relentless attacks on reproductive health for decades — and we are not backing down now. Our patients deserve nothing less.”

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said that it decided to relinquish its “Essential Community Provider” designation, so it won’t meet the definition of a “prohibited entity” under federal law and won’t be barred from receiving Medicaid funds even while it provides abortion services. 

According to KFF, Essential Community Providers are “safety net clinics and hospitals” that serve predominantly low-income, medically underserved patients. The federal Affordable Care Act requires that Qualified Health Plans available through the federal or state insurance Marketplaces include a “sufficient number and geographic distribution of ECPs, where available, to ensure reasonable and timely access to a broad range of such providers for low-income, medically underserved individuals in the plan’s service area.”

A Sept. 29 court filing from attorneys on behalf of Health and Human Services stated that organizations could continue billing Medicaid by ceasing abortion, or by relinquishing their tax-exempt status, or relinquishing their Essential Community Provider status.

Atkinson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it was unclear what the implications of giving up the ECP status might be, including whether it will affect its financial situation. 

“What we do know is that the vast majority of our patients really rely on BadgerCare as their form of insurance, and our focus is on providing as much care as we possibly can to as many people as we can across the entire state,” Atkinson said.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin  — the largest provider for abortion services in the state — offers abortion services at its clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan.