Planned Parenthood sued again Monday over efforts by Republican governors to block Medicaid funding to the nation’s largest abortion provider, this time against Texas, where the organization says health care access to 13,500 women is on the line. The decision followed the release of highly edited and widely discredited videos charging Planned Parenthood providers profited off the sale of fetal tissue.
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Republican state leaders have long worked to cut taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions at a few of its Texas clinics, but none that receive state or federal dollars.
Planned Parenthood has adamantly denied both claims. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that attempting to cut off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding is a popular tactic in conservative states.
Among the videos were recordings of staff at Houston-based Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, where two abortion foes in April misrepresented themselves as research executives and provided fake California drivers’ licenses.
“By canceling Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid contract politicians are telling women where they can and cannot go for reproductive health care”, added Richards, whose mother, Ann Richards, was Texas’s last Democratic governor, in 1995. Other lawsuits are also making their way through the courts in Alabama and Arkansas. Planned Parenthood has denied seeking any payments beyond legally permitted reimbursement of costs.
Planned Parenthood takes part in the Medicaid program for poor patients, providing health services not related to abortion such as pap smears and breast exams. It charges the state with breaking federal Medicaid law, which ensures patients have a right to choose their own provider.
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Disclosure: Planned Parenthood was a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune in 2011.
