Court: Texas Can Ban Planned Parenthood From WHP
A federal appeals court on Tuesday lifted a temporary injunction and ruled that Texas can remove Planned Parenthood from the Women's Health Program.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission responded swiftly to the decision.
"We appreciate the court's ruling and will move to enforce state law banning abortion providers and affiliates from the Women's Health Program as quickly as possible," commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman wrote in an emailed statement.
Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the appeals court's unanimous ruling "rightfully recognized that the taxpayer-funded Women's Health Program is not required to subsidize ...
Comments (32)
CeeCee Pond via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Todd Akin would be proud.
Kathy Kilmer Moak via Texas Tribune on Facebook
There is going to come a time...in the not to distant future...that all of this political nonsense in Texas is going to be looked back upon as, well, nonsense. As a Texan, I am very sad for our state.
Charlene Warfield via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Can we get beyond the abortion issue? Please! PP provides many health services to low or no income women. It is a tragedy that this has occurrd. PP is doing nothing illegal and to have this occur is going to be fought long and hard.
Victoria Hammond via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Sad day in Texas -- more pollution and less health care
Melia Newman via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I am so embarrassed for my state. Women need to stand up to this, we need to vote against every last politician that voted to ban Planned Parenthood from receiving funds.
Kimberly Maudine via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Ridiculous!
Viviana Huerta-Rodriguez via Texas Tribune on Facebook
What is this world coming to. I feel like we as women take one step forward and 10 back. We need to get these clowns out of office.
Nancy Baughn via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I agree with Melia! I went to Planned Parenthood for my own healthcare needs 40 years ago and was treated very professionally and courteously, regardless of my ability to pay! I never went there seeking an abortion and i honestly do not know anyone who did, but it's not my place to judge another anyway. PP has provided health care and testing for 2 of my daughters, both who lacked insurance and could not afford to go to a private doc for birth control. They were not pregnant and not seeking abortions either! How DARE our Texas elected officials sit in judgement of Planned Parenthood and thusly, deny thousands of Texas women the essential care they need!!!!! Planned Parenthood is a reliable and trustworthy organization that provides essential care such as breast exams, pap smears, and birth control for women who would otherwise not have access to these services. Women of Texas Need To Rise Up and Vote these Assholes Out of Office!!!!!!
Gina Garza via Texas Tribune on Facebook
As if I wasn't pissed off enough with recent political shenanigans ...women, we need to rise up and let our voices and our votes be heard. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Harmony Edwards via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Horrible. Some days I'm embarrassed to say I live in this state.
Sara Speights via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Well said, Nancy B.
Melissa Loe via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It must really suck to be Stephanie Goodman right now. I can't imagine having to spew that crap on behalf of my state employer.
Wilkins Micawber
The legacy of the Texas Taliban will be an explosion in unplanned pregnancies, Medicaid spending, and children born into poverty.
Next they will ban high-heeled shoes on women, lest the Tali-men be excited by the sound of women's footsteps.
Dennis Fitzgerald via Texas Tribune on Facebook
And Rick Perry says, "The 5th Circuit’s decision is a win for Texas women...." Right. And those damn liberals continue to dispute the fact that the Earth is flat.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If you go by election results apparently Texas women have spoken on this..or a whole lot of them anyway. A solution for PP could be to stop providing abortions on demand?
Vicki Rawlins McCuistion via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Texas' decision to basically decimate all women's health care programs provided for low-income women has to come out in the wash somewhere. So you don't want abortions, you don't want family planning/birth control. And you don't want to pay for poor people to have TANF, Medicaid or basic assistance. These decisions do not agree with each other, and will only help create more poor people, and not to mention a lot of young ones who need help in the way of medical attention, food, and education.
Chris Bazan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If Republicans want to force poor women to have children, they better come up with the money to pay their public education and medicaid.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I'm all for family planning and birth control and making these and other services available to poor women and children. I don't agree that abortion is a birth control device. It is an elective medical procedure that at least one person doesn't survive. I'm old. I came from the generation that was told "it's just a collection of cells" so like most my age I was pro choice. The science has advanced and we know better now. Being old I have friends who believed the "it isn't really Baby yet" line and had abortions..some more than once . I don't know any who don't regret it or are wishing they had better information at the time. Republicans and democrats.
Tom Sweazea via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Tom DeLay got his wish (illegally of course) in 2000 for a 'permanent majority' for the GOP in Texas. Hopefully, as the Latino population grows in the coming decade we might be able to regain control from the GOPTP in Texas.
Caitlin Gilchrist via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori: In Texas the PP clinics that provide abortions are completely separate from the clinics that don't, funding wise. The only connection they have is their name. Texas legislators decided that name was enough of a link to falsely claim that taxpayer dollars are going to pay for abortions, and they then used that claim to defund every PP clinic regardless of whether or not they actually do provide abortions. The "abortions on demand" thing was never the issue here since PP clinics in the WHP don't provide abortions. Not to mention that halting all abortions would do a lot of harm to Texas women and the Texas economy, almost as much as shutting down all these clinics is going to do.
Lois Doyle via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori: PP helps women of every economic level not just "poor" women. Many of the women do not have any medical benefits and PP provides a much needed service more than abortions and birth control.
Lois Doyle via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Texas is controlled by people who seem to want to do away with women's rights to control their own bodies and to make decisions about important things. I for one do not want to go back to the 70's and earlier when women were not treated as equals. I certainly don't want anyone else deciding for me.
Lois Doyle via Texas Tribune on Facebook
ps - women are still not equal and unless we stand up for our rights they will slowly be taken away. Lori, you are sorely mistaken to think that the women of Texas via elections have spoken...Please note that historically people under 25 do not vote and the majority of the ones I know don't want things like PP taken away and their rights infringed upon. Plus I know of many Texas voters who don't vote because 1. "doesn't matter my one vote won't change things and 2. Texas is republican controlled and has been for many years.
gypsy314 ne
Government needs to quit aid such as to planned -parenthood makes no sense to borrow money to aid others when we can not take care of our self. All aid to other country's need to stop now. And audit our country to keep them honest. Start putting someone in jail would be a good start.
Russell Stone via Texas Tribune on Facebook
A sad day for women in Texas. :,(
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
im for healthcare for the needy...male or female. i dont see anyone talking about the science and what actually happens during an abortion...and the after effects. i guess a better question for me to have answered is "could PP survive without receiving federal and state funding for abortion on demand services?" if you want to take the pro life/pro choice arguement out of it then i have to wonder "should the taxpayer be responible for elective procedures?" i will also add at under 25 yrs i was completely pro choice and would have viewed free access differently than i do now. i guess i just don't view abortion as some kind of "right"or a birth control method.. and think of birth control as an individual healthcare issue that some may need help with from time to time. my life has shown me abortion does a lot of harm to women down the road...not to mention the baby. I dont see this as republican or democrat issue.
Anya Khan
Yea!!!! The murderers at pp care more about continuing abortions than they do about Texas women.
Wilkins Micawber
@ Lori Trammell- Your former position of tolerance has faded with age. Now you oppose allowing a woman to decide what is right for her, and you support the right of Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and Todd Akin to make that decision for women. You think it is the proper role of government to intrude into the private, personal medical decisions of others. You oppose abortion as a form of birth control. So do I. It is rarely used that way.
One likely difference between you and me is that I have confronted the very real possibility of being the parent of a severely deformed child, one who likely would not survive more than a few years; one who would likely cause financial ruin to my family; a child who was conceived in love and desperately wanted, but would likely bring enormous heartbreak and hardship to his brother and family. I denied the possibility that it could happen; I thought it could never happen.When the obstetrician's expressed her concern that this was a serious situation, with serious consequences, demandinding serious and careful thought, I wanted to dismiss the possibility.The sober medical facts were presented. My response was exactly like yours is now. I did not want to end the pregnancy. The big difference between you and me is that I was the father, not the mother. My wife saw the situation through the eyes of a mother. She understood the risks, the consequences, the difficult choices, and the repercussions her decision would have on the tiny, developing embryonic being within her womb, as well as on the young child awaiting the birth of his sibling, and on her, for the rest of her life. She understood in a way I did not, as only a mother can, that this was her decision alone, and she struggled with it mightily. I realized at that time that all of my male bluster, all of my macho certainty, all of my pronunciamentos about what was right or best or important or what should be done were worth nothing to the woman who had to decide for herself what was best for her and her children. It was her decision alone. Her physician was there to help her and guide her, but ultimately she was carrying the tiny unformed human within her, and it was her decision alone. That was when I changed my mind about a woman's right to choose. My wife knew what she had to do with the certainty and the wisdom and the love and the grace that only a mother can have. The best I could do was support her decision, whatever it was. She would live with the consequences of her decision in a way that I never could.
Rick Perry can have his opinion, but he should not get to decide what is best for ANYBODY but Rick Perry. Greg Abbott is a selfish hypocrite- why on earth does anyone think he has any standing at all to decide what is best for a woman who is carrying a microcephalic child in her womb? Todd Akin is an ignorant bigot; Paul Ryan is a hypocrite and an ideologue whose worldly experiences would not cover the head of a pin; Mitt Romney is a self-absorbed, utterly plastic flim-flam man. Tell me what qualifies any of these men to even have an opinion about the private, personal anguish and struggles a woman faces when she must make one of the most frightening, difficult decisions she will ever face.
One last point. This argument is about providing health care to women in this state- women of all ages, across the economic spectrum . As elected representatives, why is it that Rick Perry and Greg Abbott and David Dewhurst and John Cornyn and Dan Patrick, etc., ad nauseum represent the interests of a small segment of that spectrum, and deny, suppress, or dismiss representation in state government to all of the rest of the citizenry? Doesn't that sound like despotism to you?
Renee E. Babcock via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lori, taxpayers don't pay for elective procedures (abortions): haven't since the 70s. As for what happens during and after an abortion, that's pretty well studied. The results don't support the predetermined results the anti-choice crowd have declared, however. What you have seen in your life cannot be generalized to the population at large. Just because you think it's harmful to women doesn't actually mean it is.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Again, nobody is addressing the science and the actual life being ended. All I'm reading sounds like "we have a right to free stuff including abortions" At the very least can we agree women should be required to be presented with all the scientific facts about abortion and fetus development before making this decision? I don't believe none of the funding that has gone to PP has ever been used for abortion or abortion providers. I have worked in accounting. Enjoyed this debate. Hopefully all of us have a taken something from it. Please don't make this a democrat/republican thing. It isn't that simple...I know dems that agree with prolife and repubs that are pro choice within limits. I dont think im generalzing. More people are coming around to the science. Peace.
Wilkins Micawber
Well, Mrs.Trammell, we are not talking about science, but that is andiscussion we could have if we lived in a scientifically literate society. Unfortunately, a certain faction in this country does everything in its political power to suppress the dissemination of scientific understanding, because the science of life challlenges their religious belief..So we must first talk about the politicization of legal, personal, private decisions.
So we are talking about the callous denial of healthcare to uninsured women in order to score political points with the rabble.We are talking about craven personalities like Rick Perry and Paul Ryan and Todd Akin who have publicly demonstrated their scientific ignorance, and are willing to manipulate the emotions of the rabble in order to further their own political ambitions.. That is what we are talking about, because we cannot have enlightened discussions in this great land of freedom.
I will believe that Rick Perry has an honest belief in the sanctity of human life when he takes a principled stand to affect the deplorable rates of child mortality and poverty and hunger in the State of Texas. I will believe that the Republican leadership in this country is speaking truthfully and honestly about their belief in the sanctity of human life when they begin to question the state-sanctioned death that the "job creators" who head the military industry in this country rain down by remote control on innocent children in third world countries.Until then, Rick Perry and his extremist ilk are merely demogogues, yanking around a credulous following. An awful lot of people who claim to be believers had better hope that Jesus isn't watching. Peace out, sister.
M Berkoff
@Wilkins Micawber, well said. Thank you for your input and thoughtful, eloquent responses. Perry, Abbott, Akin, Ryan, Romney and so many other right wingers preach that life begins at conception, but apparently it also ends at birth if you look at their politics and the dismantling of integral social support systems under their "leadership." Perry just threw women under the bus in Texas and now the GOP wants to throw a nation of women under the bus. Sad, indeed...