Maine clinics fight to restore Medicaid funds after Trump's cuts to abortion providers

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A network of clinics that provides health care in Maine asked 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 offers health care services in one of the poorest and most rural states in the Northeast.

A federal judge ruled last month that Planned Parenthood clinics around the country must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the provider wrangles with the Trump administration over efforts to defund it. That legal fight continues.

Maine Family Planning filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking to restore reimbursements. Judge Lance Walker said he would issue a ruling by the end of the week.

The loss of funding is “nothing short of catastrophic,” said Meetra Mehdizadeh, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights arguing for Maine Family Planning. She said the Maine clinics are in jeopardy “solely because Congress wanted to defund Planned Parenthood,” and that is unfair to the provider.

“Abortion is a relatively small percentage of the overall services provided at MFP,” Mehdizadeh said.

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 Medicaid dollars are not used for its abortion services.

The network previously said that without Medicaid, it would have to stop providing primary care for its patients by the end of October. It said 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.”

Emily Hall, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told the judge that Congress has a right not to contract with abortion providers.

“The rational basis is not simply to reduce the number of abortions, it’s to ensure the federal government is not paying out money to organizations that provide abortions,” Hall said.

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.

Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh, Maine Family Planning president and CEO George Hill, and Maine Family Planning director of advocacy, Olivia Pennington stand outside U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in Portland, Maine, on Thursday, August 14. (AP Photo/Patrick Whittle)

FILE - Vanessa Shields-Haas, a nurse practitioner, walks from the lobby toward the examination rooms at the Maine Family Planning healthcare facility, July 15, 2025, in Thomaston, Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station.

“It’s so good to be home,” said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.

It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board. NASA and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.

Cardman and NASA’s Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who had the health problem or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.

While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no special changes or accommodations, officials said, and the recovery ship had its usual allotment of medical experts on board. It was not immediately known when the astronauts would fly from California to their home base in Houston. Platonov’s return to Moscow was also unclear.

NASA stressed repeatedly over the past week that this was not an emergency. The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and ultimately resulting in the early return. It was the first time NASA cut short a spaceflight for medical reasons. The Russians had done so decades ago.

The space station has gotten by with three astronauts before, sometimes even with just two. NASA said it will be unable to perform a spacewalk, even for an emergency, until the arrival of the next crew, which has two Americans, one French and one Russian astronaut.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This screengrab from video provided by NASA TV shows the SpaceX Dragon departing from the International Space Station shortly after undocking with four NASA Crew-11 members inside on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This photo provided by NASA shows clockwise from bottom left are, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui gathering for a crew portrait wearing their Dragon pressure suits during a suit verification check inside the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows recovery vessels approaching the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 capsule to evacuate one of the crew members after they re-entered the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 members re entering the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 members re entering the earth in a middle-of-the-night splashdown near San Diego, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (NASA via AP)