Maine clinics hope to get blocked Medicaid funds restored as they sue
Trump administration over cuts
[August 14, 2025]
By PATRICK WHITTLE
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A network of clinics that provides health care in
Maine is expected to ask a judge Thursday to restore its Medicaid
funding while it fights a Trump administration effort to keep federal
money from going to abortion providers.
President Donald Trump's policy and tax bill, known as the “ big
beautiful bill,” blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned
Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. The parameters in
the bill also stopped funding from reaching Maine Family Planning, a
much smaller provider that provides health care services in one of the
poorest and most rural states in the Northeast.
Maine Family Planning filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking to
restore reimbursements.
Lawyers and representatives for Maine Family Planning say its 18 clinics
provide vital services across the state including cervical cancer
screenings, contraception and primary care to low-income residents. They
also say the funding cut occurred even though Medicaid dollars are not
used for its abortion services.
“Without Medicaid, MFP will be forced to stop providing all primary care
for all patients — regardless of their insurance status — by the end of
October,” the organization said in a statement, adding that about 8,000
patients receive family planning and primary care from the network.
It also said many Maine Family Planning clinics “provide care in very
rural areas of the state where there are no other health care providers,
and around 70% of their patients rely exclusively on MFP and will not
see any other health care provider in a given year.”
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 In court documents, Anne Marie
Costello, deputy director for the Center for Medicaid & CHIP
Services, called the request to restore funding “legally groundless”
and said it “must be firmly rejected.”
“The core of its claim asks this Court to revive an
invented constitutional right to abortion — jurisprudence that the
Supreme Court decisively interred — and to do so in a dispute over
federal funds,” Costello said.
While advocates of cutting Medicaid for abortion providers focused
on Planned Parenthood, the bill did not mention it by name. Instead
it cut off reimbursements for organizations that are primarily
engaged in family planning services — which generally include things
such as contraception, abortion and pregnancy tests — and received
more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.
The U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian rejected a 2017 effort to defund
Planned Parenthood because it was written to exclude all other
providers by barring payments only to groups that received more than
$350 million a year in Medicaid funds. Maine Family Planning asserts
in its legal challenge that the threshold was lowered to $800,000
this time around to make sure Planned Parenthood would not be the
only entity affected.
It is the only other organization that has come forward publicly to
say its funding is at risk.
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