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Home – Political News – Congress Makes Last-Ditch Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood With Rare Tool—Can It Work?

Congress Makes Last-Ditch Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood With Rare Tool—Can It Work?

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell

House Speaker Mike Johnson is planning a rare fourth reconciliation package to defund Planned Parenthood, according to sources, but it is unclear if he can succeed.

The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act defunded Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, for one year, but that provision expired on July 4, 2026. Pro-life members pushed for extensions of the defunding provision in both reconciliation 2.0 and 3.0 bills, but both efforts were unsuccessful. The Senate’s process of reconciliation, used for certain budget-related items, bypasses the filibuster, requiring only a simple majority vote for passage instead of the usual 60 votes.

The White House-approved reconciliation 3.0 package includes policy priorities such as Iran war spending and voter ID legislation, but it does not address the millions in funding to Planned Parenthood.

Certain members of Congress have held discussions with the Trump administration stressing the importance of defunding Planned Parenthood, a senior House aide told the Daily Signal. Yet most conservative members have agreed to vote for a reconciliation 3.0 package that doesn’t involve abortion funding.

Johnson has told pro-life groups and members to wait for a fourth reconciliation bill to defund Planned Parenthood, a prospect one pro-life operative described as a “pipe dream.” But Majority Leader Steve Scalise agreed that reconciliation 4.0 can “do the things that are left out........

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