Texas cuts off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood

One of those clinics is in McAllen.

In fact, however, alternate providers have already shown themselves unable to fill the gap left by the state’s defunding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood says it accepted legal reimbursements of $45-60 per specimen, at only 1% of its affiliates. Under national Medicaid regulations, according to a memo from the federal agency in charge of the state-federal program, “states are not, however, permitted to exclude providers from the program exclusively on the basis of the range of medical services they provide”.

As David Brown from the Center for Reproductive Rights explains: “Whether by restricting a safe method of ending an early pregnancy or [by] forcing doctors to lie to their patients, Arizona politicians have made it their mission to cut off access to safe and legal abortion”. The truth is: “there are real alternatives to Planned Parenthood that offer high-quality, affordable women’s health care”.

The videos have been criticized by Planned Parenthood as being heavily edited. To kick a group out of a state Medicaid program, the state has to show fraud or criminality, and none of the investigations into Planned Parenthood sparked by the CMP videos have turned up any.

In 2010, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast collaborated with the University of Texas Medical Branch, a publicly funded hospital, on a miscarriage study that involved fetal tissue. “There are other organizations within Louisiana that are offering low-priced healthcare”. Specimens can be sold at cost but not for a profit. “It’s all just a matter of line items”.

And while Bechler hopes the bill garners more support, getting it passed from the House to the Senate will depend on which bill committee Democrat Speaker Greg Stumbo assigns it to for a hearing. “Larger than any the other affiliates’ combined”. Planned Parenthood also accused video makers of working under false pretenses.

Planned Parenthood, which has denied the allegations, is fighting similar lawsuits in Alabama, Arkansas and Utah. Any clinics that donate tissue in the future will do it for free.

The private citizens allowed into the lab were the secret videographers, who were actors posing as people trying to buy fetal tissue for medical research.

They said Planned Parenthood had 30 days to submit evidence contradicting their findings.

Texas, eager to plunge with both feet into the yodeling, pitchfork-waving Planned Parenthood defund-a-thon, gleefully told the women’s health agency Monday: Get ready to shut your doors. Additionally the 7th and 9th Circuit Courts have struck down state laws that push abortion providers out from Medicaid.

A federal judge should release a decision today.

Any Planned Parenthood clinics in the state of Texas will no longer receive Medicaid funding.

“The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed in Texas and the barbaric practice must be brought to an end”, Abbott said in a statement.

The organization has been under fire nationally since the videos began coming out this summer from an anti-abortion activist group. 14 directive to cut funding, including a message from the Utah Department of Health’s deputy director, Robert Rolfs, who requested his employees provide the governor with reasons why the funding should not be stopped. Although running for president, Governor Bobby Jindal ordered his state to stop the funding as a result of the leaked videos.

The letter sent to Texas clinics attempted to address the issue of access to other services. Restricting access to nationally recognized clinics with extensive resources for great care tips the scales further, underscoring the war against the poor that Republicans have waged alongside their war against women.

A spokeswoman for the organization would not say whether it would challenge Texas in federal court.

Jindal spokesman Mike Reed said the administration would appeal the judge’s decision in Louisiana. Texas’ Medicaid program does not reimburse for abortion procedures.

As mentioned above, defunding at the state level is trickier.

As for the plaintiffs, both she and Pochoda say they are ready to go to trial as soon as possible because, they say, science is on their side.