Carson, who supports eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood because it supplies fetal tissue, has said that medical research does not require aborted fetuses.
Advertisement
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, has recently been exposed in videos of manipulating abortion procedures so that they can retrieve unharmed baby parts in order to sell them.
The Arkansas contracts involved services including nurse practitioners, pharmacy and family planning and were delivered through the Arkansas Medicaid program.
“The allegations against Planned Parenthood are deeply troubling.”
When the states announced their move, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stepped in, contacting health officials in both southern states. “Current Utah state law prohibits the use of state funds to provide abortions by Planned Parenthood or any other organization”. In an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, Carson also said that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had written about eugenics and “was not enamored of black people“. Federal courts have overturned previous attempts in Arizona and Indiana to disqualify Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.
The language in the contracts allows either party to cancel the contract at will with 30 days notice.
“In some instances, actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, which is standard across the medical field”.
In the South, withholding funding would have the most impact in Louisiana, where more dollars have been paid to Planned Parenthood.
“This political grandstanding could have real and devastating consequences for women who rely on Planned Parenthood for birth control, cancer screenings, STD tests and other lifesaving care”, Angie Remington, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said in a statement.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of 17 contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, earlier this month was the first to lead his state to cut funding of Planned Parenthood, following a failed effort to do that in the U.S. Congress.
The neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate made the statement after a blog published sections of a 1992 paper, co-authored by Carson, which described research using aborted fetuses.
Advertisement
The House Energy and Commerce and the Senate Judiciary committees had asked the company to explain its ties with Planned Parenthood after the release of the videos, according to Politico.
