Texas Legislator Trying to Defund Planned Parenthood

Another state tries to see if it an pull family planning money out of the hands of one of the state's biggest provider of birth control and family planning services.

A Texas legislator is soliciting advice to discover if the state can deny Planned Parenthood family planning money, regardless of the fact that their abortion services are kept completely separate from their family planning operations.

The Dallas News reports:

Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, is seeking the attorney general’s help in keeping state funding for contraception and women’s health out of the hands of Planned Parenthood.

Deuell supported a bill that would allow Texas to set up a “demonstration project” for women’s health whereby the state health department could not contract with groups, “that are affiliated with entities that perform or promote elective abortions.”

Being a demonstration project means it could try new things and jump certain Medicaid regulations. The Bush Administration approved the waiver.

But the Texas Health Department, relying on legal advice, found that they couldn’t keep Planned Parenthood women’s clinics, the side that doesn’t do abortions, from participating and awarded $5 million in contracts to 12 of its health clinics last year.

Due to the failure of the bill to pass, Deulle is now asking the Attorney General Greg Abbott to weigh in on the matter.  Abbott is publicly anti-choice.

Texas is only the latest state to attempt to deny family planning funding to Planned Parenthood under the charges that it could somehow, someway be used to support abortion.  Kansas legislature attempted the same move earlier this year, and the governor had to issue a veto to have the funds returned.  And New Jersey legislature is still in a back and forth battle to allow family planning funding in the state budget, which some state politicians are fighting on the grounds that Planned Parenthood might receive a piece.