In 2017, Mike Pence cast the deciding vote to urge states to slash protections for Title X — the only federal program dedicated to helping people with low incomes access affordable birth control and other preventive reproductive health care, including STI services and cancer screenings.

As an Indiana representative, Mike Pence introduced the very first piece of federal legislation to "defund" Planned Parenthood. “Defunding” is a misnomer that means blocking patients who rely on government-funded health care from accessing preventive services — like birth control and STD testing — at Planned Parenthood health centers.

Mike Pence’s anti-LGBTQ record is a long one, and he aggressively opposed gay rights as a legislator in Indiana.  In 2015, Mike Pence ignored strong opposition and signed legislation to allow Indiana business owners to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

In Indiana, Mike Pence’s policies as governor made a preventable HIV epidemic worse.

While running for Congress, Mike Pence said public funding for HIV prevention should go to “institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” So-called conversion therapy uses discredited practices to get people to change their sexual orientation. It can cause irreparable emotional and mental trauma to LGBTQ individuals, who already face discrimination, intolerance and violence.

The Trump-Pence administration is planning to let states cap Medicaid spending. Under this “block grant” system, the federal government would give states a fixed amount of funding for Medicaid, instead of picking up the slack when states go over budget on Medicaid costs (such as when there’s a natural disaster). The likely results of block grants: states limiting Medicaid by enrolling fewer people, or offering fewer services, or paying health care providers less (which, in turn, would stop some providers from taking Medicaid patients).

In a speech to anti-abortion groups, Mike Pence predicted that legal abortion would end "in our time" and that “this will be the generation” to outlaw abortion. For proof, Pence pointed to the Trump administration's restrictions on access to safe, legal abortion and care at Planned Parenthood health centers.

At the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC), Mike Pence echoed President Trump’s lies about abortion later in pregnancy, and he praised the president for pushing policies that restrict people from accessing abortion safely and legally. Pence’s rhetoric supports the administration’s overall agenda of working to outlaw abortion, with the aim of winning over the country’s minority of anti-abortion voters.

As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence signed every abortion restriction bill that passed his desk.

Greenlighting Texas’s Backdoor “Defund”

On the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, HHS decided to let Texas receive federal Medicaid funding for a state program that bars patients in the program from accessing preventive care at Planned Parenthood and other health centers that also provide abortion. This move upends longstanding federal law.  In the past, the federal government has refused to fund state Medicaid programs that aim to take away the right of Medicaid users to choose whatever qualified reproductive health care provider they want.