On 'Here & Now' and MSNBC, Professor Ziegler Discusses South Carolina Planned Parenthood Case

Professor Mary Ziegler appeared on the public radio program Here & Now, MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports and Bloomberg radio in early April to discuss Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a case rooted in South Carolina’s attempt to exclude Planned Parenthood from Medicaid funding.

Although Planned Parenthood does not accept Medicaid for abortions, South Carolina contends that “money is fungible,” Ziegler explained on Here & Now. “And if South Carolina provides these Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood, they can use them to essentially make more room to pay for abortions with other funding.” (Ziegler pointed out that abortions are largely illegal in South Carolina, anyway).

Ziegler noted that because Planned Parenthood receives funding from many sources, ending Medicaid funding would not defund the organization’s political or advocacy work. But it could further limit the “sometimes inadequate access to primary care and in particular to obstetrical and gynecological care” in South Carolina, Ziegler said. “I think that that would be where the impact would be felt most acutely.”

Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. Her book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction (Yale University Press) will be released April 22.