Texas to Fully End Taxpayer Funding of Planned Parenthood

According to Breitbart, “Planned Parenthood facilities in Texas will no longer receive taxpayer funds through the Medicaid program beginning February 3.

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The state denied the abortion provider’s request to continue to receive Medicaid reimbursement funding for its clinics, as Catholic News Agency observed.

100 DAYS PRAYER POINT:

Pray that states would stop funding abortion, like Texas. Pray for pro-life legislation and action in states.

Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, praised the persistence of the Texas legislature, and said while the abortion industry has spread the narrative that low-income women need Planned Parenthood for health services, many other options actually exist. . . .

In November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overruled a lower district court’s decision, ending a five-year battle waged by Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas to block the state from eliminating their Medicaid taxpayer funding.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cited undercover video showing Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue activities in his statement about the ruling, asserting the abortion vendor is not “qualified” to receive taxpayer funds:

The Fifth Circuit correctly rejected Planned Parenthood’s efforts to prevent Texas from excluding them from the state’s Medicaid program. Undercover video plainly showed Planned Parenthood admitting to morally bankrupt and unlawful conduct, including violations of federal law by manipulating the timing and methods of abortions to obtain fetal tissue for their own research. Planned Parenthood is not a ‘qualified’ provider under the Medicaid Act, and it should not receive public funding through the Medicaid program. . . .

Planned Parenthood based its case on the claim that a patient should be able to choose who is a Medicaid provider, as CEO Alexis McGill Johnson tweeted:

Let’s be clear — patients should be able to go to the provider they know and trust regardless of their zip code and income level. Accountability is coming, and we will fight back against any politician who doesn’t prioritize expanding accessible, affordable quality health care.

— Alexis McGill Johnson (@alexismcgill) November 23, 2020

Editor’s Note: Chief Judge Priscilla Owen, a George W. Bush appointee, said:

“The Medicaid Act leaves it up to a State to determine if a particular provider’s Medicaid agreement should be terminated because the provider is not ‘qualified’ or terminated on other grounds,” Owen wrote, adding:

A Medicaid patient is not involved in a provider’s willingness to accept Medicaid procedures, regulations, and reimbursement rates. Additionally, whether a provider is “qualified” is largely a factual determination with the facts more readily available to the provider, not the Medicaid patient. If a state agency or actor determines that a particular provider is not qualified, in most if not all cases, it is the provider who has the most incentive to contest such a finding and to seek a resolution.

According to Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report, the abortion provider received $616.8 million from “government health services reimbursements and grants,” primarily through the Medicaid program. . . .

Editor’s Note: In response, Abby Johnson, a former Planned parenthood manager  and turned pro-life activist said:

As much as abortion advocates will cry this decision hurts the poor and oppressed, Planned Parenthood has been repeatedly caught abusing the very same medical program that is indeed supposed to help low-income families. . . .

They paid $4.3 million to the federal government and Texas in 2013 for Medicaid fraud and as of 2017, 51 known external reviews and audits showed Medicaid overbilling at nearly every clinic that was investigated. And money that comes into Planned Parenthood, no matter the source, is put into one pot and from there is distributed for everything the clinic needs to stay afloat, including abortions. Taxpayer money, even in the form of Medicaid, pays for abortions. . . .

“Women are just a number for Planned Parenthood, a number that will increase their bottom line no matter what,” she explained. “Medicaid funding needs to go to those who need it, not to so-called health clinics who have perfected the practice of abusing the system to the detriment of the very women they claim to serve.”

In addition to defunding Planned Parenthood, Paxton announced last week that Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins defended the constitutionality of the state’s law (Senate Bill 8) prohibiting second-trimester dismemberment abortions in the Fifth Circuit. . . .

In a medical animation video provided by pro-life organization Live Action, former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino demonstrated a second-trimester D&E (dilation and evacuation), or dismemberment, abortion during which the abortionist uses instruments to remove the limbs from an unborn baby, between 13 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy, prior to extraction from the uterus:

. . .

BREAKING: Texas court strikes down a ban on the safest and most common second trimester abortion method! That's something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Eve. #TXDeservesBetter pic.twitter.com/jk5Jd28X0W

— Center for Reproductive Rights (@ReproRights) November 22, 2017

Paxton appealed the ruling, however, to the Fifth Circuit. . . .

Paxton said, according to the Center Square, the law “prohibits the State Employee Charitable Campaign and its Policy Committee from entering into a taxpayer resource transaction with an abortion provider or an affiliate of an abortion provider.” . . .

(Photo Credit: Getty Images.)

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