(LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected Planned Parenthood’s appeal of a fraud ruling that could lead to the abortion giant having to pay back nearly $2 billion in Medicaid payments.

The case stems from Louisiana and Texas (among other states) excluding Planned Parenthood from their state Medicaid programs after the 2015 exposure of the organization’s harvesting and sale of aborted baby organs and tissues. Planned Parenthood sued in 2016, but the Fifth Circuit sided with the states in 2020.

However, the current suit, filed a year later, is based on whistleblower complaints that Planned Parenthood continued to file Medicaid claims in Louisiana or Texas from 2016 to 2020 while its eligibility was in dispute. The false claims suit seeks to recover money from the abortion giant that would total $1.8 billion.

The “stakes couldn’t be higher” for the abortion giant, March for Life president Jennie Bradley Lichter said last year. “If that ($1.8 billion) obligation stands, it will strike a serious – even existential – blow to Planned Parenthood’s national operations and potentially change the abortion landscape in this country forever.”

On Wednesday, Bloomberg Law reported that a three-judge panel had originally agreed Planned Parenthood had “absolute immunity” from the claims, but the full Fifth Circuit concluded Wednesday that the abortion giant’s appeal is too premature to be considered at this stage in the case, on the grounds that “resolving the immunity question would not conclusively determine a separable legal issue in a way that meaningfully advances the litigation.”

The case now returns to federal district court, where it is far from over, potentially putting the abortion giant back on the hook.

According to Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report, it committed 434,450 abortions and 2.27 million “birth control services” in the 2024–2025 reporting period, and 320,390 telehealth appointments. By contrast, it lists a mere 3,038 adoption referrals. The abortion giant’s affiliates received $832 million in “government health services reimbursement & grants,” which comprised 38 percent of its total revenue. 

Its government funding increased five percent from the previous year and will likely increase yet again after Congress and the White White failed to renew the one-year ban on its federal funding by the July 4, 2026, expiration date.

To end the cycle of having to periodically fight for temporary defunding measures at regular budget intervals, pro-lifers have called for new standalone laws to fully and permanently defund the abortion industry: the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which permanently bans federal funds from being used for abortion; and the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which disqualifies Planned Parenthood and its affiliates specifically. But they would require 60 votes to make it through the Senate.

Pro-lifers have also called on the Trump administration to reintroduce the Protect Life Rule, a key policy of President Donald Trump’s first term that required “clear financial and physical separation between Title X-funded projects and programs or facilities where abortion is a method of family planning” and banned “referral for abortion as a method of family planning.” It reduced Planned Parenthood’s annual funding by almost $60 million, and disqualified the abortion giant from the Title X family planning program until former President Joe Biden rescinded it.

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