Planned Parenthood Buys Some Time In Texas Women's Health Plan

When it comes to Planned Parenthood funding in Arizona and Texas, stalling looks to be the name of the game: notably, both states are seeing the women’s health provider taking their respective state policymakers and governors to court in order to buy some time before they’re excluded from state-funded health plans and go the way of the dinosaurs. Last week Planned Parenthood’s restraining order tactic was successfully deployed in the Grand Canyon state, and although it’s hardly a victory, it is a quiet success that women can continue to use their clinics as a resource for the time being.

After losing their request for a rehearing in federal appellate court Thursday, Planned Parenthood was granted a restraining order on their exclusion from Texas’ Medicaid Women’s Health Program. Earlier in the month, Governor Rick Perry cut 28 Planned Parenthood clinics and 71 other health centers, physicians, and family planning clinics for providing, referring, suggesting or dropping the vaguest hint that “smashmorshion” was a thing; the fact is that Planned Parenthood in particular provided care for 50% of WHP members and didn’t even provide abortions.

The governor responded to the lawsuit exactly the way you’d think: “If there was ever any doubt that Planned Parenthood is more concerned about its own interests than those of Texas women, there is no longer. Having lost on its constitutional claims, Planned Parenthood has now turned to Travis County judges in a desperate effort to find some way to keep making money off Texas taxpayers.” (He likely then went on to sip iced teas with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in rocking chairs on the axis of evil.)

The judge who granted the restraining order warned that if Texas goes through with kicking Planned Parenthood out of the WHP, which would almost certainly leave the state’s low-income women with few or no heath options, the state had better stop taking the nearly $36 million federal funding that covers the Women’s Health Program. The next hearing in the case, during which Planned Parenthood will request a more permanent (still temporary!) injunction, is scheduled for November 8th.

‘Planned Parenthood wins restraining order on Women’s Health Program’ [Houston Chronicle]