A US judge has ruled that a network of medical centers in Maine will not receive funds from the Medicaid healthcare program while a case is being heard against the Trump administration’s efforts to stop funding abortion service providers. The tax and policy law passed by President Donald Trump, known as the ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,’ blocked the flow of Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country. The law’s provisions also stopped funding to Planned Parenthood in Maine, a much smaller healthcare provider in one of the poorest and most rural states in the Northeast. Maine Family Planning states that Medicaid funds are not used for abortion services, which constitute a relatively small portion of the total services provided.

A lawyer for Maine’s family planning clinics told the judge earlier this month, ‘It is unfair to cut funding to clinics just because Congress wanted to defund Planned Parenthood.’