The Post-Dobbs Landscape
Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, thirteen states enforce total bans on abortion. Five more restrict the procedure at six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant.
Wyoming enacted its six-week ban in early 2026, the latest state to do so.
The result: roughly one in three women of reproductive age in the United States live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted. Emergency rooms in ban states report turning away patients with ectopic pregnancies and incomplete miscarriages while lawyers review whether treatment qualifies for narrow exceptions. Doctors in Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee have described delaying care until patients are sick enough to meet the legal threshold for intervention.
1 in 3 women of reproductive age live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted.
Planned Parenthood Lost Federal Medicaid Funding
The 2025 budget reconciliation law included Section 71113, which blocks federal Medicaid reimbursement to Planned Parenthood and two smaller clinic networks for one year, from July 2025 through July 2026. The ban covers all services, not just abortion. That includes contraception, cancer screenings, STI testing, and prenatal care.
The ban affects Planned Parenthood clinics in 39 states. In the first months, affiliates absorbed roughly $45 million in unreimbursed care. Some clinics reduced hours.
Others stopped accepting new Medicaid patients. California allocated $90 million in emergency state funds to partially fill the gap. Most states have not.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia filed legal challenges. Those cases are still working through the courts.
Title X Family Planning in Limbo
President Trump’s FY2026 budget proposed eliminating the entire $286 million Title X program. Congress kept the funding in the final appropriation, but the administration created its own obstacle course. HHS froze 22 Title X grants through most of 2025, then gave grantees one week to respond to new continuation guidance in March 2026.
The new rules stripped two requirements: adherence to “Quality Family Planning” clinical standards and equity goals. Clinics that made public statements supporting diversity lost funding entirely. The Guttmacher Institute estimated that 30 percent of Title X patients could lose access to care.
Title X is the only federal program dedicated to family planning for low-income patients. It serves roughly 3.6 million people a year. The program does not fund abortions and never has.
2026 Ballot Measures
Voters in three states will decide reproductive rights ballot measures in November 2026:
Missouri — The state legislature referred an amendment that would repeal the reproductive rights protections voters approved in 2024. If passed, it would ban abortion from conception with narrow exceptions.
Nevada — Question 6, which enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution, passed with 64 percent of the vote in 2024. Nevada law requires ballot measures to pass twice. It returns to voters in November.
Virginia — The legislature referred a constitutional amendment establishing a right to reproductive freedom, including abortion care, contraception, miscarriage management, and fertility care.
Signature drives are underway in Idaho and Nebraska for additional measures.
What You Can Do
Call your members of Congress at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose any extension of the Planned Parenthood Medicaid ban past July 2026. If you live in Missouri, Nevada, or Virginia, confirm your voter registration now — these ballot measures will shape reproductive rights for a generation.
Check your state legislature. Several states are considering copycat bans or new restrictions on medication abortion, which now accounts for the majority of procedures nationwide. Your state representative’s vote matters more than it did before Dobbs.
If you or someone you know needs abortion care, the National Abortion Federation Hotline at 1-800-772-9100 provides referrals and financial assistance.
Update, June 12, 2026: Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky filed a lawsuit in Alaska Superior Court on June 11 to overturn a state law that prohibits telehealth for abortion services. The law requires patients to receive abortion care only at on-site facilities approved by the Alaska Department of Health or at federal government hospitals. The organization simultaneously filed a motion for an injunction to block enforcement of the ban while the case proceeds.
The lawsuit argues that Alaska’s constitution guarantees of privacy and equal protection are violated by prohibiting telehealth for abortion while permitting it for other medical services. Many Alaska residents live off the road system and must travel to Anchorage or Fairbanks for in-person care, a burden the complaint says falls on rural patients, survivors of violence, and those with limited finances.
Acting Attorney General Cori Mills said the Alaska Department of Law will defend the law and described it as carrying a presumption of constitutionality. Planned Parenthood won a related case in 2024 when Superior Court Judge Josie Garton struck down the state’s physician-only requirement for abortions using the same constitutional arguments. The Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the state’s appeal of Garton’s ruling in October, and no decision has been issued. — Alaska Beacon
Update, June 24, 2026: Planned Parenthood Great Plains announced it will open a clinic in New Orleans later in 2026 and expand telehealth services in Louisiana starting this summer, nine months after the organization’s two Louisiana clinics closed. Emily Wales, the network’s president and CEO, said Louisiana patients had been traveling to its 13 existing clinics in Arkansas, Kansas, western Missouri, and Oklahoma for care they could no longer access at home.
The New Orleans location will offer contraception, STI testing and treatment, gender-affirming care, and cancer screenings, but will not provide abortion services. Wales said Planned Parenthood will support patients who choose to travel to states where abortion is legal, and expects to announce the clinic’s address by late August or early September once local staff are hired and trained.
The two Louisiana clinics, operated by the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast affiliate, closed September 30, 2025, after the Trump administration’s Medicaid cuts reduced funding to the organization. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has separately sued the Food and Drug Administration to end its telehealth policy allowing abortion medication to be prescribed without an in-person visit, a case the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to continue while keeping the existing rule in place. (Source: Greg LaRose, Louisiana Illuminator, June 24, 2026)
Update, July 7, 2026: The one-year Medicaid funding freeze on Planned Parenthood expired Saturday, restoring the organization’s access to federal reimbursements for non-abortion services. The freeze was imposed by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law last July, which barred organizations providing abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements if they had collected more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023. A Planned Parenthood report released this week found that nearly 30 health centers closed nationwide during the ban.
Connecticut offset the funding loss with an $800,000 emergency appropriation in February 2025 and a $10.4 million allocation announced by Gov. Ned Lamont in December 2025. Earlier this year, following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Trump administration also released tens of millions in Title X funds it had withheld from Planned Parenthood since spring 2025.
With the ban expired, states now hold independent authority to exclude providers from their Medicaid programs. Planned Parenthood of Southern New England President Amanda Skinner said the organization’s backers in Congress are still pursuing a permanent defund. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that she is working to keep the Medicaid funding stream secure.