Oregon remains a state with some of the strongest protections for reproductive rights and access to care for women. However, the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (HR 1) has created new challenges for healthcare organizations state- and nationwide.
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, organizations like Planned Parenthood have faced significant threats due to proposed federal funding cuts. These cuts target essential reproductive health services, including abortion access and gender affirming care, particularly impacting low-income patients.
Many of these patients rely on Medicaid, also known as Oregon Health Plan, to access reproductive and preventative healthcare service. For Planned Parenthood, this means as long as they continue to offer abortion services, the policy prevents them from being reimbursed for the work they do.
“They’re an incredibly important part of the Medicaid ecosystem, and if Planned Parenthood goes away, we will not have enough healthcare providers to provide the services that Oregonians need,” said Oregon Democratic House Majority Leader Ben Bowman, a TuHS alumnus and former writer for The Wolf.
In response to the growing challenges healthcare providers face, Bowman and other Oregon legislators have formed a work group to protect these services in the 2026 legislative session. They seek to ensure Oregonians continue to have reliable access to healthcare.
Bowman emphasizes the importance of Planned Parenthood to Oregonians, elaborating on how the bill will affect its operation.
“What this bill does is, it says, if you were an organization that provides abortion services like Planned Parenthood, if you provide abortion services, we’re not going to give you any Medicaid dollars to provide any of the preventative health services that you do,” Bowman said. “So, in effect, what they’re doing is, they’re saying Planned Parenthood can’t provide STI testing. They can’t provide cancer screening. They can’t provide prepartum, postpartum care. They’ve stripped away the organization’s ability to do what they exist to do, which is to provide healthcare for people who need it.”
Planned Parenthood’s low-income patients will feel these effects the hardest. Furthermore, the new law has heavy implications for the rights and freedoms of all women in the country.
Junior Mahaela Horsford, co-president of Tualatin High School’s Feminism & Gender Equity Club, commented on the law’s ramifications.
“Abortion rights are important to protect because abortion is healthcare, no matter how you look at it,” she said. “In 1973, feminism took a huge leap forward with the famous Supreme Court case Roe v Wade. However, in 2022, when it was overturned, feminists across the US felt the weight of this loss. Within the past couple of years, we’ve seen the impact of the destruction of abortion protections, highlighted by the increased mortality rate and risk of injury women suffer from in states with abortion bans.” Horsford suggests students looking to speak out against the funding cuts attend protests.
“The feminist movement was built on protests, and we must continue to fight for the rights our grandmothers once gained, and we can now see are so easily lost,” said Horsford.
Oregon lawmakers filed a lawsuit against the Trump ad-
ministration but despite their efforts, the funding cuts be-
gan affecting providers across the state as of Sept. 12.
