California lawmakers send $90 million grant package for Planned Parenthood clinics to Newsom

Andrew Graham, The Sacramento Bee on Feb 9, 2026

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Both chambers of the California Legislature voted Monday to send a $90 million grant package for women’s health clinics to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, moving quickly to shore up the state’s reproductive health programs against cuts pushed by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Assembly and Senate Democrats backed identical bills in each chamber that would appropriate the money from the state’s general fund and make it immediately available to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions, cancer screenings and other reproductive health care services. Democratic state lawmakers appropriated $30 million more than the $60 million Newsom called for in his budget.

The money appropriated Monday does not fund abortion procedures itself, bill proponents said, but is designed to cover the wide range of other services — like sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and cervical cancer screenings — such clinics provide.

Without the funding for clinics, hospitals around the state will face a new wave of women dealing with “cervical cancer, breast cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, unintended pregnancies,” state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, D-San Diego, a physician, said. “Why? Because they didn’t have the ability to go and get the preventative care, the preventative screening.”

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, and Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, announced last week that they would fast-track the legislation, as California policymakers rush to respond to a freeze Republican-controlled Washington, D.C., imposed on Medicaid reimbursement going to Planned Parenthood.

“From day one, Trump and his Republican enablers have waged an all-out assault on women — attacking abortion access, family-planning and reproductive health,” Rivas said in a statement last week. “Outrage alone won’t stop it.”

The federal government’s block on Medicaid dollars for Planned Parenthood lasts for just one year.

With each chamber passing a mirror bill on Monday, Newsom can quickly sign off on the legislation if he chooses to and clinics can begin to access the funding as federal dollars dry up. This week’s appropriation added to nearly $150 million lawmakers set aside for reproductive health clinics in last year’s budget bill.

More than 80% of visits to Planned Parenthood in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, according to the Legislative Service Office.

Republican state lawmakers opposed the measure, saying the Legislature was circumventing its process and abandoning transparency and accountability in order to funnel tax dollars to a political ally. The draft legislation includes an exemption from the state’s public records laws for contracts created through the grant programming — a move proponents said was justified because of medical privacy and safety concerns around abortion clinics.

And Republicans accused Democrats of rushing to fund a favored political cause while neglecting both the state’s growing budget deficit and a wide range of other funding needs including the looming closure of some rural hospitals that are increasingly in financial distress.

“I would suggest that is a crisis,” state Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said.

But Democrats said women would quickly begin to suffer if the funding streams weren’t established before federal cuts drive clinics to close their doors. Several Democrats who spoke in each chamber said Republican state lawmakers were being hypocritical in their criticism that the majority party was ignoring rural hospital funding concerns, as it was their party slashing Medicaid dollars at the federal level.

“I haven’t heard you stand up one time and talk about any accountability when it comes to the federal budget,” Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, said to Republicans in that chamber.

California previously created a law allowing Planned Parenthood clinics in the state to provide services to women from Republican-led states that have banned abortion in the years since the U.S. Supreme Court ended a nationwide right to the procedure in 2022.

The funding package was one of two pieces of legislation both chambers fast-tracked through Monday. The other was a resolution condemning racism, and specifically Trump’s posting of a since-deleted racist video last week targeting former Pres. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

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