Perhaps no state in the nation has been as aggressive as Texas and attempting to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Texas has employed just about every tool at its disposal to ensure that Texans are not on the hook for funding the nation’s biggest abortion company.
Now, State officials are asking the Trump Administration to affirm a new unprecedented effort to defund the abortion giant.
Texas was previously successful in preventing millions of taxpayer dollars from going to the Planned Parenthood abortion company by withholding State dollars through the Medicaid Program. Texas created an alternative to fund family planning and legitimate healthcare efforts that did not involve the abortion business.
Now, the Guardian newspaper has obtained a letter in which Texas officials are asking the Department of Health and Human Services to fund that program so it can continue to be an alternative to funding Planned Parenthood. As the newspaper reports, leading abortion advocates are upset by the move:
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
In its letter, which is expected to be sent to the Trump administration as early as this week, Texas makes no indication that the state plans to comply with those laws and reinstate Planned Parenthood’s funding.
“We’re all terrified,” said Elizabeth Nash, senior state issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights. “This is really huge, if they let Texas do this.”
A half dozen other states have attempted to exclude Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs. But only Texas, by giving up millions in such funding, has been successful.
If the Trump administration was to reinstate Texas’s funding, it would signal that other states could follow suit without suffering a financial hit.
“It would let all of these states start kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid,” Nash said. “And Medicaid is by far the largest form of public funding for family planning.”
