Speaker John Boehner announced on Friday that Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will lead the House Select Committee On Planned Parenthood, along with seven other anti-choice Republicans. the outgoing Republican noted the group will be called the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s new Select Investigative Panel, and “will focus on the grisly practices of big abortion providers”.
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“We’ve been in contact with law enforcement and we are assessing our security plans for health centers to ensure that we are taking appropriate action because the safety of our patients and our staff is our number one priority”.
About 54 percent of respondents initially supported federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
Disclosure: Planned Parenthood was a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune in 2011.
On Friday, the House passed a budget bill – with Harris voting in favor – that would dismantle key parts of the Affordable Care Act and strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood for a year.
Governor Greg Abbott order the investigation following the release of undercover videos that seem to show Planned Parenthood admitting to the illegal sale of fetal tissue.
Planned Parenthood, which offers preventive care, pregnancy testing, abortions and cancer screenings, has about 22,000 annual patients in Nevada. Research using fetal tissue helped in the discovery of a polio vaccine, and today it is a critical resource in studies of retinal degeneration, pregnancy loss, fetal health and human development disorders such as Down syndrome, according to the National Institutes of Health, which funds about $76 million in fetal tissue research annually.
Bowen also mentioned that Texas has reached at a decision that Bowen and Planned Parenthood affiliates can no longer provide medical services fulfilling certain requirements like professionally competency, safety, legality and going as per ethical manner.
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood officials are claiming innocence and have slammed Abbot for initiating the raids.
They snapped photos but did not say what prompted the visit. A request delivered to a Dallas facility included a request for files from clinics in Austin and Waco.
Among the documents investigators are requesting are Medicaid records dating back to 2010.
“Unfortunately, by attacking Planned Parenthood’s preventative health care services – which is what’s getting attacked by defunding attempts – politicians are attacking the very things that actually prevent abortion”, Higgins said.
State officials moved Monday to cancel Medicaid contracts under which Planned Parenthood is reimbursed for providing non-abortion health services to low-income Texas women. This month, the group announced it would decline any reimbursement for expenses related to fetal tissue donation to dispel the notion it has any financial interest in such research. He also made references to two court cases over Medicaid billings in which the state prevailed over Planned Parenthood, and to whistleblowers who worked there.
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And, importantly for many Republicans, it would also impose a one-year moratorium on federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Stacey Pogue, health care policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP), a left-leaning Texas think tank, told the Observer that a state can not eliminate a medical provider from the program for reasons other than violations of the law.
