PAYING FOR YOUR CHOICES

Consider the Source: Planned Parenthood refuses to give up the dole without a fight (Mark Donald, 7/24/03, Dallas Observer)

The Texas Legislature has added a rider to its appropriations bill that denies public funding for family planning to any abortion provider, even if it performs abortions with private funds. And even though Corsicana Health Services does not perform abortions itself, the fact that it is an affiliate of Planned Parenthood of North Texas, which does provide abortions, will be enough to deny it family-planning funds.

Six of Planned Parenthood's regional affiliates, including North Texas, have taken this rider personally and filed a federal lawsuit claiming that this legislation amounts to the state levying an unlawful penalty on a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose. Because the state also is placing greater restrictions on the use of the federal government's money than the federal government is, Planned Parenthood alleges these restrictions (no family-planning funds if the organization performs abortions) are also unconstitutional. Its petition has received some favorable play from an Austin federal judge, who has granted a restraining order preventing the state from requiring Planned Parenthood affiliates to either sign a pledge to stop providing abortions or be disqualified from the state family-planning program. He will consider extending the injunction at a hearing scheduled for July 25.

The legislation is far too sweeping, argues Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for community relations for Planned Parenthood of North Texas, and "risks depriving 115,000 low-income women of their health-care needs at 33 clinics across the state." The $13 million in federal dollars helps fund family planning and reproductive health services, not abortions, which are offered at only seven clinics and account for only 2.3 percent of the medical visits to its 85 clinics in Texas.

The legislative sponsors of the rider--Senate Republicans Steve Ogden from Bryan and Tommy Williams from The Woodlands--say their legislation was not meant to target Planned Parenthood in particular or family planning in general. They just want government out of the business of subsidizing abortion providers, whether that means directly for the procedure itself or indirectly for the expenses--staff, rent, utilities--of its family-planning clinics or services.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, Planned Parenthood also believes that this rider is part of a "pernicious web of assault" that is bent on destroying its organization--as well as family planning. "Abortion is just the ideological tip of the iceberg," says Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The hard right--which has found a spokesperson in President Bush--has long been opposed to reproductive health care and is making an orchestrated attack on family planning and sex education."

You know, the right to a free press doesn't obligate taxpayers to help you operate a newspaper either. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 23, 2003 6:58 PM