Wisconsin Blocks Federal Funds From Reaching Planned Parenthood

Rick Allgeyer, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s research director, stepped down after he co-authored a study critical of limits to Planned Parenthood access.

The study found GOP efforts to exclude Planned Parenthood from the state’s family planning programs had a detrimental effect on access to reproductive health care.

Both measures received intense criticism from women’s health care and abortion rights advocates as they made their way through the state Legislature.

Bryan Black, a spokesman for the department, told the Texas Tribune Thursday that Allgeyer was disciplined for working on the study on taxpayer time.

Black wrote that Allgeyer “broke policy by working on the study during his workday”. It concluded that cutting Planned Parenthood out of the Texas Women’s Health Program wasn’t such a hot idea, lowering the number of women who were able to get IUDs and raising the number of births covered by Medicaid.

“He should have never been putting in time on this study during the normal business day, he was paid to perform state business”, Black said in an email.

Allgeyer did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

While state and federal law prohibit the use of taxpayer money for abortions, Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion activists say any money given to Planned Parenthood could support the procedures.

State Sen. Jane Nelson earlier dismissed the findings as invalid, in part because the study was funded by the Susan T. Buffett Foundation, a backer of Planned Parenthood. “It’s quite another to be listed as a “co-author” on a deeply flawed and highly political report”, said Nelson, an architect of Texas’ current women’s health program. Black did not address the status of Imelda Flores-Vazquez, a program specialist, who worked under Allgeyer and joined the agency in 2014.

But Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood public policy director Nicole Safar said the group has a 40-year track record of winning that grant. But she said the agency hopes to convince Medicaid officials the law is unconstitutional because it singles out Planned Parenthood to receive a lower reimbursement rate just because it provides abortion services.