Josh Shapiro tore up Pennsylvania's contract with the pregnancy centers that help women choose life over abortion.

Three years later, the state's biggest abortion business just showed him how much they appreciated it.

Now Planned Parenthood is cashing in that favor with an endorsement that says everything.

Planned Parenthood Endorses Josh Shapiro For Pennsylvania Governor

Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates announced its endorsement of Governor Josh Shapiro on Thursday.

Shapiro is running for reelection against Republican State Treasurer Stacy Garrity.

Signe Espinoza, the group's executive director, posted the endorsement herself.

"The choice is obvious for anyone who believes in access to essential health care and the fundamental right to make your own decisions," Espinoza wrote.

"Planned Parenthood is with Josh Shapiro one hundred percent," she added.

Espinoza did not stop there.

"In the world of Dobbs and 'defunding' health centers, the stakes of state races have never been higher," she wrote.

"Josh Shapiro has risen to those stakes time and again as our Governor."

Translation: the nation's largest abortion provider just told Pennsylvania exactly who protects its business.

What Shapiro Defunded At Real Alternatives Pregnancy Centers To Earn It

Here is the health center Espinoza was really talking about.

In 2023, Shapiro's administration terminated the state's contract with Real Alternatives, a nonprofit that had funded pregnancy centers helping women choose life for nearly thirty years.

"For decades, taxpayer dollars have gone to fund Real Alternatives," Shapiro said at the time. "My Administration will not continue that pattern."

A woman named Liz found one of those centers during her first year of culinary school, pregnant and told by her own family that they would disown her if she kept the baby.

A Real Alternatives maternity home took her in anyway.

She gave birth to a son named Karmon, then finished her training and became a nursing assistant while raising him.

Liz is one of more than half a million women Real Alternatives says it has served facing an unplanned pregnancy over three decades in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana.

That program had steered over $30 million toward diapers, counseling, and support for women just like her.

Pregnancy centers were not the end of it.

He has pledged to veto any bill restricting abortion in Pennsylvania.

He joined a lawsuit against a federal ban on mailing abortion pills.

He declined to appeal a court ruling that struck down Pennsylvania's ban on Medicaid funding abortions, opening the door to taxpayer-funded abortion.

"As long as I'm your Governor, abortion will remain safe and legal here in Pennsylvania," Shapiro has said.

Safe and legal for the abortion industry. Not so safe for the pregnancy centers he defunded.

Pro-Life Leaders Are Calling Out A Radical With Bigger Ambitions

Maria Gallagher was not surprised by the endorsement.

The legislative and PAC director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation has called Shapiro a "pro-abortion extremist."

Gallagher says Shapiro's record is "radical" enough that he "wiped out money to assist Moms who want to keep their babies," calling it "a gift to the abortion industry, with which Shapiro is closely aligned."

She pointed to Shapiro's favorite phrase on social media, "reproductive freedom," and called it exactly what it is.

"Code language for abortion on demand, for any reason, or for no reason at all," Gallagher wrote.

She added that Shapiro "is also silent when it comes to the issue of coerced abortions" and "shrouds his allegiance to abortion under the mantle of 'health care.'"

"Voters beware," Gallagher wrote. "Josh Shapiro is pursuing policies which harm women and children."

Gallagher also flagged something bigger than this race: she says Shapiro "appears to be preparing for a run for President in 2028."

Pennsylvania voters have an actual choice this November.

Garrity calls herself pro-life, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, and she has criticized Shapiro's Medicaid abortion decision directly.

She has even sold "Defund Planned Parenthood" merchandise on her own campaign website.

Real Alternatives is gone from the state budget, and it says a follow-on cut of seven million dollars in 2024 has already forced some Pennsylvania pregnancy centers to close their doors.

The ones still standing are doing more with less, for women exactly like Liz who need somewhere to go besides a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Every dollar Shapiro redirected away from those centers is a dollar Planned Parenthood did not have to spend convincing women like her otherwise.

That is the endorsement Pennsylvania just got a look at.

Sources:

• Steven Ertelt, "Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz Endorses Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro," LifeNews.com, September 4, 2026.
• Staff, "Shapiro terminates state funding for Real Alternatives anti-abortion centers in Pa.," Pennsylvania Capital-Star, August 2023.
• Staff, "Real Alternatives, a funder of crisis pregnancy centers in Pennsylvania, will no longer receive state dollars, Shapiro administration says," The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 2023.
• Staff, "Pa. election 2026: Where governor candidates Garrity and Shapiro stand on abortion," State College, June 2026.
• "Real Stories," Real Alternatives, realalternatives.org.
• Staff, "Real Alternatives marks more than 505,000 women served," 1888lifeaid.com.