Austin, Texas, (EWTN
News/CNA): In a unanimous decision, a federal court on Tuesday
lifted an injunction that protected Planned Parenthood from a
Texas law that bars state funds from organizations that perform
or promote abortion.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who backed the law, said Aug. 21 the
decision is “a win for Texas women, our rule of law and our
state’s priority to protect life.”
Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Steven
H. Aden also praised the decision in an Aug. 22 statement,
saying it shows “abortionists and their political allies are
bluffing when they say that states cannot stop taxpayer funding
from being used to subsidize abortions, whether directly or
indirectly.”
The 5th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted a federal
district court’s temporary injunction that preserved state
funding before an October trial in which Planned Parenthood
intends to challenge the law, the Associated Press reported.
The court decision said the district court “gave
insufficient attention to Texas’s authority to subsidize speech
of its choosing within its programs.”
The funds concern the Texas Women’s Health
Program, which provides services to many women not qualified
through Medicaid. The program previously funded Planned
Parenthood’s provision of family planning and health services to
poor women. About 65,000 women of the 130,000 enrolled in the
program secured services through the abortion provider, though
state funds were not used for abortion.
Cecile Richards, president of the Planned
Parenthood Action Fund and daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann
Richards, said the legal case is “about the women who rely on
Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings, birth control and
well-woman exams.
However, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot said Aug. 21 that the
decision “rightfully recognized that the taxpayer-funded Women's
Health Program is not required to subsidize organizations that
advocate for elective abortion.”
He said his office is “encouraged” by the decision and will
continue to defend the Women’s Health Program in court.
State-level efforts to defund abortion providers
have increased in recent years. However, they have faced
significant legal and regulatory obstacles as well as
interference and threats from pro-abortion rights officials in
the federal government.
In December 2011 the Obama administration
threatened to deny federal funding to the Texas women’s health
program if the law stood.
A similar defunding effort in
New Hampshire that threatened $1.8 million in funding for
Planned Parenthood caused the Department of Health and Human
Services to say it would give a federal grant to the abortion
provider.
In July 2012
a federal official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services in Chicago reaffirmed that an Indiana law barring
Medicaid funds to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood is
unacceptable on the grounds that it denies women the freedom to
choose their health care providers, according to the Associated
Press.
