In response to Mike Johnson doubling down on the Trump-Vance plan to defund Planned Parenthood, DNC Spokesperson Aida Ross released the following statement:

“Anti-choice extremist Mike Johnson just confirmed the GOP is ‘preparing the playbook’ for Donald Trump to enact his extreme Project 2025 agenda to defund Planned Parenthood and rip away our basic rights. From primary care and cancer screenings to contraceptive services, Planned Parenthood provides millions of Americans with access to health care. But Trump’s MAGA GOP doesn’t care about protecting Americans’ health — just ripping away reproductive freedoms as women continue to die preventable deaths under abortion bans Trump made possible.”

🚨 BREAKING: Donald Trump’s MAGA minion Mike Johnson said he would defund reproductive health care services if given the chance, which is wildly unpopular with the American people.

MacCallum: “Two specific examples, Planned Parenthood and PBS are in congressional control, are you planning to axe both of those?”

Johnson: “I would like to, that’s for sure-” 

MacCallum: “-spending for both of those?” 

Johnson: “Yeah, we got to build consensus to have the votes to do that. Now, some of this will be done by executive order out of the White House-” 

MacCallum: “Absolutely.” 

Johnson: “-[Trump] has the broad authority to do a lot of that. But where Congress is involved, that’s where it takes the hard work of legislating and getting everybody on the same page. So there will be lots of ideas that come out, we did not want to put too many of it out right now, ok. But this is part of that preparing the playbook to unleash and unroll in January.” 

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans support Planned Parenthood, which provides millions of Americans with health care every year — including primary care, contraceptive services, and cancer screenings.

Planned Parenthood: “More than three-fourths of Americans (77%) have a favorable view of Planned Parenthood, with the strongest support among women, adults under 35, and Black, Latino, and AAPI communities.”

Politico: “Planned Parenthood serves about 1.6 million of the roughly 4 million low-income women who depend on Title X clinics for free and subsidized care.”

Planned Parenthood 2022-2023 Annual Report: 

“Telehealth Appointments in 2022: 123,855

“Primary Care Visits: 70,945

“Preventive Care Visits: 129,216”

Planned Parenthood 2022-2023 Annual Report: “Breakdown of Affiliate Medical Services”

“Contraceptive Services: 2,250,913”

Planned Parenthood: “Breakdown of Affiliate Medical Services”

“Cancer Screenings & Prevention: 464,021 [over the year]”

Johnson has a long record of attacking reproductive health care, including co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act, which would ban abortion nationwide and include no protections for IVF access.

Business Insider: “Most House Republicans have cosponsored a bill declaring that life begins from the moment of conception, a position under increased scrutiny after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are ‘unborn children.’

“This Congress, 125 House Republicans — including Speaker Mike Johnson — have cosponsored the ‘Life at Conception Act,’ which states that the term ‘human being’ includes ‘all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.’

“The bill does not include any exception for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a reproductive treatment that allows mothers to fertilize several eggs outside the womb in order to increase the chances of a viable pregnancy.”

Punchbowl News: “Johnson doesn’t back exceptions for abortion:

‘I’ve never supported exemptions. It’s a matter of conscience to me. But [Trump] was very clear. He qualified those statements, as well. And he said everybody has to express your own conscience … It’s a difficult issue in a lot of districts and everybody needs to go and address it … in an appropriate way. And so far, everybody is.’”

Jezebel: “[Johnson] expressed hope that Roe v. Wade would someday be overturned, railed against people supposedly ‘using abortion as birth control’ and appeared to blame school shootings on abortion: ‘When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.’”

Donald Trump and JD Vance’s Project 2025 agenda would defund Planned Parenthood — something Vance himself confirmed on the campaign trail.

Vance: “On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood … our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late term abortions. That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around, it will remain a consistent view.”

Project 2025, page 471: “Prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds … Policymakers should end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.” 

Project 2025, page 472: “HHS should … 1) Issue guidance reemphasizing that states are free to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans. 2) Propose rulemaking to interpret the Medicaid statute to disqualify providers of elective abortion from the Medicaid program. Congress should pass the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, which would accomplish the goal of defunding abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.” 

Project 2025, page 491: “Congress should complement these efforts by passing legislation such as the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act,78 which would prohibit family planning grants from going to entities that perform abortions or provide funding to other entities that perform abortions.”

During Trump’s first term, his administration’s “gag rule” defunded hundreds of Title X clinics, disqualifying providers like Planned Parenthood from providing care under the program.

Guttmacher Institute: “[T]he Trump administration’s domestic ‘gag rule’ has slashed the Title X national family planning network’s patient capacity in half, jeopardizing care for 1.6 million female patients nationwide … roughly one in every four Title X service sites left the network in 2019 because of the domestic gag rule, shorthand for restrictive regulations that prohibit—among other things—referrals for abortion care. In 2019, an estimated 981 U.S. clinics receiving Title X funding—approximately one-quarter of all sites that received Title X funding as of June 2019—likely left the Title X network because of the gag rule.”

KFF: “While in office, Trump’s Administration rewrote the rules governing the federal Title X program, the federal family planning program that supports contraceptive access for people with lower incomes. Title X funds have never been used to pay for abortion services, but Trump’s Administration rewrote the regulations to disqualify family planning clinics from participating in the program if they also offered abortion services (with separate funding) … These changes resulted in a reduction of about 1,300 of the 4,000 sites participating in the network of clinics receiving federal support from the Title X program.”