“If you’ve got 38 Planned Parenthoods and you’ve got 732 competing alternative health agencies that are willing to do the same things, why do we need to keep funding Planned Parenthood?”.
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This launch includes a new website, www.IVotePPAction.org, and a series of volunteer forums across the country.
Briscoe Cain, Texas legal counsel for Operation Rescue told Breitbart Texas, “Planned Parenthood betrays women”.
As previously reported, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission sent a letter to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast last month, providing the entity with a notice of termination. “Our supporters and volunteers won’t stand for it – we are strong, we are organized, and we vote”. The decision followed the release of highly edited and widely discredited videos charging Planned Parenthood providers profited off the sale of fetal tissue.
Ten anonymous Planned Parenthood patients, who say they would lose access to their health provider of choice, also joined the lawsuit.
It points to two federal lawsuits that had been settled for millions after whistleblowers came forward about false Medicaid claims that had been filed.
Federal courts have halted similar attempts in Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama while lawsuits play out. These videos and this reporting reveal the lucrative nature of the business and potential violations of USA law.
According to figures provided by Texas health officials, the state’s retooled family-planning programs reached 317,393 women in the 2014 fiscal year, almost as many as the 320,044 the state served in fiscal 2010, before it cut off funding to Planned Parenthood.
This isn’t the first time Planned Parenthood has sued the state over being pushed out of a joint federal-state program.
“As such, ending the Medicaid participation of Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state of Texas is another step in providing greater access to safe healthcare for women while protecting our most vulnerable – the unborn”. Funding would be cut off 15 days after the state provides “forthcoming” Final Notices of Termination.
About 13,500 patients will be affected if Texas’ plan of cutting funds, which may occur as early as Dec.8, 2015, prevail. The videos were later found to be doctored, and subsequent state investigations have not found any evidence of wrongdoing by the organization.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to review a 2013 Texas law that would force clinics to meet hospital-like surgical standards and require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.
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This latest attention to the Planned Parenthood videos and Lockhart’s honest and strong willingness to defend speech for the pro-life group is refreshing after other recent episodes of the show.
