Vermont’s largest abortion provider wants the 2025 Legislature to make up a projected $8.6 million, three-year shortfall.
According to the Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Action Fund PAC 2024 candidate survey, the culprit is stingy, unsympathetic state and federal government services. “In recent years, Planned Parenthood patients’ access to care has been under attack at both the federal and state levels.”
However, critics of Planned Parenthood of New England say the State of Vermont has been a staunch defender of the organization that is also the leading provider of transgender services in the state. They also say that consumer interest in surgical abortions is way down, thanks in part to PPNE’s advocacy for increased access to RU-486, the ‘abortion pill.’
Although not true with either the Biden administration or the State of Vermont, there is some truth to the gist of the complaint in other states and branches of the federal government. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will weigh South Carolina’s cut of Medicaid funding for abortions. Across the Connecticut River, the State of New Hampshire and the State of Maine both have declined to fund Planned Parenthood.
Here in Vermont, where a former Planned Parenthood lobbyist is Speaker of the House and Gov. Phil Scott has signed virtually every pro-abortion and pro-transgender care bill in recent years, and voters in 2022 approved a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to abortion, it’s a different story. When the Trump administration cut out Planned Parenthood access to Title X family planning funds, the State of Vermont immediately picked up the tab.
Planned Parenthood can’t operate at full speed without help from the taxpayer, it argued in its 2024 candidate questionnaire:
“This mission is more expensive than ever before, and they cannot do it alone without state investment. PPNNE is facing a financial deficit totaling $8.6 million over the next three years, after already enduring three years of deficits.”
The Legislature is already facing 20% increases in health care insurance premiums, nursing and manpower shortages, an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis, increasing property taxes, a multi-billion $$ bill for replacing aging school buildings, child care payroll taxes, proposed carbon reduction and flood mitigation expenditures, and demands by ‘social justice’ state offices like the Vermont Human Rights Commission and the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission for increased staff and funding.
Planned Parenthood of Northern New England claims to provide comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care to more than 16,000 people in Vermont at seven health centers located in Burlington, Williston, St. Johnsbury, Barre, White River Junction, Rutland, and Brattleboro and virtually through telehealth.
Critics of ongoing funding for PPNNE in Vermont point to at least two reasons for their financial shortcomings: 1) at Planned Parenthood’s prompting, abortion pills are more available online than ever. Therefore, fewer women are seeking surgical abortions at one of the ‘health centers.’ Also, PPNE has spent considerable sums on a new computer system.
