The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which Family Research Council President Tony Perkins called “one of the biggest abortion cases since Dobbs” because it “has the potential to decide whether states can withhold Medicaid funds from abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”

“We feel very good coming out of oral argument today,” said Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel on “Washington Watch.” “We feel very good about the kinds of questions the justices were asking, and how well our arguments were received.”

Schandevel was seated at the attorney’s table alongside ADF lawyer John Bursch, who “argued the case on behalf of South Carolina’s director of its Health and Human Services” Eunice Medina, he explained, giving him “a front row seat to see all the justices interacting with John and asking him questions,” and “asking really hard questions of the other side.”

“What became very clear, very quickly is that the justices whose votes we need to prevail in this case clearly understand how important it is for the court to speak clearly,” shared Schandevel. “The justices on the court seem to understand very well how important that is to the states, how important it is to South Carolina.”

He argued that states should enjoy discretion on how they administer Medicaid funds, freeing them from liability to federal lawsuits except where Congress has imposed clear conditions on Medicaid. “If Congress is going to impose requirements on states as a condition for them accepting Medicaid funding,” he explained, and if, as a result, states “could be dragged into federal court and have to defend against these really costly federal lawsuits, [then] Congress needs to speak with a very clear voice.”

“This case is about whether or not states will be free to redirect limited taxpayer resources away from activist organizations like Planned Parenthood — that are advancing an agenda — and direct those taxpayer funds to providers offering comprehensive health care services,” Schandevel shared. “South Carolina has said … taxpayers in our state should not be forced to fund a radical, multibillion-dollar organization that is so fundamentally at odds with the values and the priorities of our citizens.”

“Planned Parenthood is not a health care provider,” insisted Mary Szoch, director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, to The Washington Stand. “They’re a politically active organization that primarily performs abortions and provides gender transition hormones, while occasionally performing STD tests or breast exams.”

“In 2022, Planned Parenthood for America (PPFA) committed 392,715 abortions, killing an average of 1,076 babies per day,” she continued. “Since 1999, ‘breast care’ at Planned Parenthood has dropped 81%. Moreover, even The New York Times has reported on the shoddy, unsanitary, unsafe ‘care’ provided at their facilities.”

“After Dobbs, what we saw from Planned Parenthood is that they double down on a radical political agenda, and now they’re expanding,” Schandevel explained, “Outside of just doing abortions now, they’re also providing these dangerous so-called gender transition drugs.” Szoch stated that, “of PPFA’s 49 affiliates, 45 provide ‘gender-affirming hormone therapy.’” In fact, Planned Parenthood has so embraced gender transition procedures that it has become “the nation’s second largest trafficker in transgender-facilitating drugs,” Perkins noted, “in many cases, to minors.”

“South Carolina is a pro-life state,” insisted Schandevel. “Governor [Henry] McMaster (R) has said, ‘I want to make sure my citizens are protected and cared for, and that they receive the best and the highest quality health care that they can … especially those citizens in South Carolina who can’t afford to pay for their own medical assistance, and who are on Medicaid as a result.’”

South Carolina believes that delivering the best possible Medicaid care involves excluding under-qualified providers, including Planned Parenthood. “Congress, in passing the Medicaid Act, was very intentional,” insisted Schandevel. “Congress wanted states to have discretion to decide which providers are qualified, and which providers are disqualified.”

“But, unfortunately, thanks to some bad precedent and some bad lower court decisions,” he continued, “federal courts have been stealing that discretion for themselves, and they’ve been telling states like South Carolina, ‘No, you have to fund organizations like Planned Parenthood.’”

In other words, if the Supreme Court does not overturn these lower court rulings, “the state would be forced to do something and support something that’s at cross purposes with the laws that they’ve adopted,” Perkins summarized. “As we anticipate the Trump administration moving more toward block grants … states will not be able to discern how to spend those monies in keeping with the values.”

“Any state should be able to say patients receiving taxpayer-funded Medicaid deserve actual health care,” urged Szoch, “not whatever Planned Parenthood is providing.”

But “this is not just about Planned Parenthood. … The implications of a decision could be far-reaching,” Perkins insisted. “You’ve got probably 9,000 disqualified Medicaid providers out there in the system. And, depending on how this case goes … they could have a consumer sue, saying they’ve been denied a service from one of these, and take the state to court.”

“It would really be just absurd to think that any of those 9,000 providers” would be able to sue the state to include them, Schandevel agreed. These providers “have been disqualified … from Medicaid for a whole host of reasons: … low-quality poor care, putting their patients at risk, putting their patients in danger, committing medical malpractice.”

Yet this situation is precisely what would result under the arguments advanced by Planned Parenthood’s lawyers, Schandevel declared. “Planned Parenthood’s theory is, if a state makes that decision that this provider is not qualified and is going to be dangerous to its citizens and disqualifies them as a result of that, [then] one individual who’s been to that provider one time in the past has a federal right to drag the state into federal court. … That position just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

He noted that Justice Amy Coney Barrett drilled down on this very point, asking whether Planned Parenthood’s theory would “open the floodgates” of lawsuits. “Planned Parenthood’s attorneys just didn’t have a good answer to that question,” Schandevel recalled.

“We’re expecting an opinion in this case by the end of June,” Schandevel concluded. “We’re very hopeful and optimistic that the Supreme Court is going to issue a sweeping ruling that will free states across the country to say, ‘No, our taxpayer dollars are not going to fund a radical organization like Planned Parenthood. We’re going to fund providers that are actually offering real, comprehensive health care services to the citizens who live in our state.’”

“We will pray to that end,” answered Perkins.