Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funds for abortions and transgender care for minors.
The investigation comes as the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on transgender care for minors in the coming weeks.
A 2024 report found Planned Parenthood performed 402,230 abortion procedures and cancer screenings made up 426,268 of the organization’s services from Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 30, 2023. During that period, federal funds made up the largest share of Planned Parenthood’s revenue at 39% of total revenue.
The report also lists that Planned Parenthood completed 77,858 “other procedures,” which includes “transgender services.”
In a letter to Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s president and CEO, Greene said these services include providing cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and surgical referrals.
As chair of the House oversight’s DOGE subcommittee, Greene is launching the investigation to track what services receive federal funding at Planned Parenthood.
“As a recipient of nearly $800 million in federal funds in fiscal year (FY) 2023, and the second largest provider of gender hormone therapies in the United States, the Subcommittee is concerned that Planned Parenthood may be commingling federal funds and using them for unpermitted purposes,” Greene wrote.
Federal funds appropriated to Planned Parenthood come through Title X of the Public Health Services Act, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Greene asked for public and private financial statements regarding federal funds used at Planned Parenthood since 2020 along with a litany of questions related to the kinds of transgender care and abortion services provided through Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Center Square.
The investigation comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to make a landmark decision on transgender treatment for minors in U.S. v. Skrmetti. The case challenges laws in Tennessee and Kentucky which ban puberty blockers, sex-change surgeries and hormone therapy.
The challenged law bars health care providers from performing “a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” the Tennessee law reads.
The government filed suit alongside a group of parents with transgender children in Tennessee, arguing it violated the equal protections clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.
The group also argued that a categorical ban on treatments for transgender minors is inconsistent with protecting an important government interest because it is not substantially related to the state interest of protecting minors from possible physical or emotional risks due to medical treatments.
In oral arguments on the case, the high court appeared poised to uphold Tennessee’s ban on transgender treatments for minors.
Conservative justices of the court appeared unwilling to reverse the state law and preferred to leave the decision up to state legislatures and elected officials.
“If the Constitution doesn’t take sides, and there’s strong, forceful scientific policy on both sides in a situation like this, why isn’t it best to leave it to the democratic process?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.
Justice Samuel Alito also took issue with the outcomes of expanding transgender medical treatments in Europe.
“There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide,” Alito said referring to a 2024 European report on the expansion of transgender medical treatments in Europe.
The liberal justices of the court appeared to support the argument for the transgender families. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson equated the court’s decision to Loving v. Virginia, which struck down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage.
Jackson said the decision in Loving v. Virginia considered whether the state had “rational basis” to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages. She warned against applying the same principle of rational basis to Tennessee’s law with transgender care for minors.
“I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases,” Jackson said.
Greene set a deadline of June 20 to receive funding documents and testimony from Planned Parenthood on its abortion and transgender treatment practices.
In the meantime, the nation’s highest court is expected to issue the consequential Skrmetti decision before the end of its term.
