Amid media reports of a Planned Parenthood victory, the Florida agency issued a second letter saying its position had been misrepresented.
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Planned Parenthood says three of its Florida clinics can resume performing first-trimester abortions after reaching an agreement with state health officials.
In a recent interview, Republican front-runner Donald Trump cited the videos allegedly exposing illicit fetal tissue transactions among Planned Parenthood officials as justification for his flop in the abortion debate.
Jenny Black, president of the Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said last month that South Carolina’s anti-abortion legislators are using the videos to advance their own political agendas, calling it part of a smear campaign by extremists who want to ban abortion.
Gallagher is not only Planned Parenthood’s lawyer in the lawsuit – for four years during the first term of former Gov. Jeb Bush, she was the general counsel for AHCA, the very organization now investigating Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood has strongly denied the claims made in the videos, arguing that the footage is heavily edited and used its staff members’ comments grossly out of context.
“I just don’t think they ought to receive my money that I pay in taxes”, said Kathy Scholl, 66, a Republican from Iowa Park, Texas. The organization claims that Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) changed its standards for calculating first- and second-trimester abortions with no advance notification. They’ll keep shouting to defund Planned Parenthood in an effort to close down clinics across the country.
Planned Parenthood attorney Julie Gallagher contends that isn’t true. Now he’s exploring whether the University of Missouri hospital is violating the law by entering into an agreement to allow a doctor who is performing abortions in Columbia to refer patients to it and to follow-up on them. Three congressional committees have launched investigations and five states have cut Planned Parenthood funding following the release of the undercover videos.
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“These clinics are licensed to perform only first trimester pregnancy terminations and we believe that’s what they’ve been doing since the rule was promulgated”, Gallagher said.
