Cambridge, MA, July 1, 2025 – The US Supreme Court’s rulings in United States v. Skrmetti and Medina v. Planned Parenthood, among others, will have direct and devastating impacts on health care access and reproductive rights for trans, gender-diverse and all LGBTQ+ people, Medicaid beneficiaries, immigrants, and many other communities that face disproportionate barriers to care.
Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, released the following statement in response to these Supreme Court decisions:
"This term, the Supreme Court had multiple opportunities to push back against harmful policies enacted by the Trump Administration and state policymakers that discriminate against trans and all LGBTQ+ people, Medicaid beneficiaries, immigrants, and other communities that already face barriers to care that impact health outcomes and wellbeing. Rather than protecting the rights of these communities to access the health care they need, we were devastated to see that in the majority of these cases, the Justices’ rulings instead empowered states to continue carving out exceptions to their rights and denying health care to people based on their gender or income level.
The Justices’ ruling in United States v. Skrmetti allows states to deny basic health care to trans gender young people, even when the very same care is permitted for their cisgender peers. Their ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic allows states to deny Medicaid beneficiaries the right to choose which health care provider is best for them. And their rulings in Mahmoud v. Taylor and Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton could potentially open the door for states to censor accurate, evidence-based information about sex and sexuality—especially for LGBTQ+ communities—based on policymakers’ own personal biases. We all deserve evidence-based, comprehensive, high-quality health care, including contraception, abortion, and gender-affirming care.
These rulings hit especially hard as they come nearly three years to the day after the Dobbs decision decimated abortion access across the country, and left millions of Americans without access to high-quality, affordable, and respectful abortion care. While it is easy to feel hopeless as we watch rights get stripped away from communities that already face long histories of systemic oppression in the US legal and health care system, we will not stop fighting for the high-quality, evidence-based sexual and reproductive health care that we all deserve.
In this challenging moment we are also facing an attack on science and the institutions, like NIH, that fuel the development of new and improved treatments and advances in evidence-based health care, as well as the destruction of the US support of the global health infrastructure that saved millions of lives and improved the wellbeing of people around the world. We stand in solidarity with researchers, health care providers, advocates, and communities working to protect and advance all of our rights and access to care.
At Ibis, we remain committed to our vision of a world where everyone has the power and resources to have a healthy, safe, and pleasurable sexual and reproductive life and build the families they choose. We will continue to support our partners—both in the United States and across the globe—to identify key strategies to increase access to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception care, and generate the data and evidence to fight for supportive policies and work toward a future where everyone, no matter where they live or who they are, can exercise their fundamental human rights."