Sarah Davis, the only Republican member of the Texas Legislature who votes against Pro-Life measures, claims to believe that abortion is a “horrible way to end a pregnancy,” yet in 2013, Davis voted against the Texas’ historic Pro-Life Omnibus Bill, or HB 2.
HB 2 prohibits the gruesome killing of preborn babies who are capable of feeling pain while requiring abortion mills to meet the same health and safety standards required at other surgical facilities. Sarah Davis, however, sided with Wendy Davis, whose filibuster jeopardized the health of pregnant women while leaving fully-formed children vulnerable to excruciating dismemberment through abortion.
In this 2015 84th Session of the Texas Legislature, Sarah Davis (R-Houston) opposes a Pro-Life measure that would keep abortion-affiliated clinics from federal funding under the auspices of providing cancer screenings. Abortion-affiliated facilities cannot be trusted to handle any government funding – a fact supported by the $1.4 million Medicaid fraud for which Planned Parenthood was sanctioned and fined in 2013. Furthermore, Texans are asking themselves why groups that commit abortion and that don’t offer mammograms receive funds to screen for such cancers at all.
Lying and bullying is the tried-and-true approach for the abortion industry. Facing the threat of losing funds, Planned Parenthood, America’s abortion giant, bloviated that women will “die” if Planned Parenthood loses this funding stream. Sarah Davis uses her own breast cancer survival story to suggest that irreparable harm will come to women’s health in Texas if abortion clinics or their affiliates are disqualified from funds for breast and cervical cancer screenings: “If we don’t have the provider network, women cannot be served. And they will die.”
Our own state’s Health & Human Services Commission has worked for years to identify and enroll clean providers in the network of women’s health services and programs. The non-abortion-affiliated list of other screening providers is readily available to women across the state. But neither Davis, nor the media, nor Planned Parenthood will share this life-saving information. For example, in Waco, the Dallas Morning News erroneously stated that Planned Parenthood was the only facility that received funding to provide female cancer screenings. But the truth is that Planned Parenthood is one of twelve facilities equipped to provide tax-funded cancer screenings, all these facilities receive funding from the state’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program.
Every time Texas Right to Life has found a new way to remove more money from the abortion industry, Texas has become safer for women. By slowly crippling the predatory abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, health care dollars are directed to much needed programs that serve a broader population and offer a wide spectrum of services. More non-abortion-affiliated options for women in Texas means healthier, happier women, moms, and families for Texas. Even Sarah Davis could agree that expanding women’s health care to non-controversial agencies is a mutually-beneficial goal, but Davis would cut her cord from the abortion business.