By Jasper Ward

Oct 24 (Reuters) - Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul and California Governor Gavin Newsom said that they would fund reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood amid federal cuts from the Medicaid insurance program.

The Republican-led Congress' spending bill enacted over the summer denied funds from the joint federal-state program to certain tax-exempt organizations and their affiliates, such as Planned Parenthood, if they continued to provide abortions.

The move was challenged by Planned Parenthood but ultimately upheld by a federal appeals court last month.

In light of the cuts, Hochul on Friday said New York would fully cover one year of missing Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood in the state, providing more than $35 million. Newsom on Thursday said that California would invest more than $140 million to support access to the reproductive health provider.

"California is a reproductive freedom state, and this latest investment continues to show our belief in protecting access to essential health care in times of distress," Newsom said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood serves more than 200,000 patients each year among 47 health centers in New York and sees more than a million patient visits among more than 100 centers in California, according to the governors.

President Donald Trump 's July spending bill aimed to "shut down Planned Parenthood health centers, strip access to essential health care from patients, and make it harder for everyone, everywhere to get an abortion — even in states where it’s legal," the group's spokeswoman, Angela Vasquez-Giroux, said.

Conservatives have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions along with other health services such as cancer screenings. U.S. government funding for nearly all abortions has been banned since 1977, so the group uses other funding sources to pay for those procedures.

The conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women's constitutional right to abortion. In 2024, it preserved access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

(Reporting by Jasper WardEditing by Peter Graff)

((Jasper.Ward@thomsonreuters.com;))