The news of the Obama Administration’s decision to coerce Texas into including Planned Parenthood in the Medicaid-funded Women’s Health Program has been widespread. The administration has demanded that the abortion committer be included or all federal funding to the program will cease permanently.
What has remained virtually unknown, however, is that Planned Parenthood itself called for the destruction of the Women’s Health Program, in the event that they were barred from participating.
In May 2011, Planned Parenthood lobbied in Austin, Texas against new rules that banned abortion providers and any abortion affiliates from receiving funds under the Texas Women’s Health Program. The abortion giant heavily promoted a lobby day to get supporters to beseech their state representatives to grant funding to Planned Parenthood under WHP rules. They distributed a letter to the Lieutenant Governor and two high-ranking senate members calling for the bill that would have renewed the program to be killed.
From the letter: “We [Planned Parenthood] believe this legislation is harmful to Texas women’s health and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars… We encourage you to amend SB 1854 or not pass it at all.” Planned Parenthood called the bill banning the abortion provider “constitutionally abhorrent, fiscally irresponsible,” and claimed it would have left women without care.
Furthermore, the abortion business threatened legal action: “Planned Parenthood is obligated to sue the State of Texas in order to ensure that all low-income Texans who rely on Planned Parenthood for their family planning needs…can continue to access their chosen and trusted health care provider.” No doubt, Planned Parenthood knew quite well that the bill contained a provision stating that if an abortion entity sued and won, that the entire program would shut down.
Planned Parenthood even called on president Cecile Richards to give a speech at a poorly attended lobbying rally. At the rally, Richards called the exclusion of Planned Parenthood “political blackmail,” and called for the complete destruction of the program if they were not included. Earlier she told legislators to “stop playing politics with women’s health and start focusing on what you were elected to do.”
Senate Bill 1854 did not pass. Instead, the legislature approved a budget that renewed the Women’s Health Program without funding Planned Parenthood or any clinic affiliated with an abortion business. The request to renew the program—with the new Pro-Life rules—was sent to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, where it was denied last week because it excluded the abortion provider.
Richards got her wish: the federal government refused to renew the program without Planned Parenthood, and now thousands of women will be without care because of Planned Parenthood’s spiteful political manipulation which was supported by Barack Obama.
What is ironic is that while Richards told state officials to stop playing politics with women’s health, that is exactly what Planned Parenthood did in May and what Obama is doing now. Obama is refusing to grant women legitimate services all because his favorite abortion provider was left out.
Planned Parenthood’s hypocrisy is revolting. The organization’s own website states that their mission is “provide comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care services in settings which preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual.” However, they are only concerned with women receiving reproductive services if they are the ones providing it, and ushering them into the abortion-infested world Planned Parenthood inhabits.
Texas Right to Life obtained a copy of the letter that Planned Parenthood used to bully legislators. It can be viewed here.