A federal judge in Austin, Texas has ruled that Texas cannot ban Planned Parenthood from receiving funding from the Medicaid Women’s Health Program (WHP). This has been an ongoing battle between the state of Texas and the federal government.
The Medicaid Women’s Health Program, (WHP), is part of the Medicaid program in Texas. It provides funding for the basic preventative care that women need. It includes things like cancer screenings, reproductive health care, and birth control. The program is used by low-income women who cannot afford private health insurance coverage. More than 124,000 women in Texas use WHP.
Medicaid is a program that is partially funded by an individual state, and partially funded by the federal government. In Texas, the state provided 10% of the funding, and the federal government provided 90% of the funding. Planned Parenthood is the leading sexual and reproductive health care provider in the United States, and it is the largest provider of women’s health care in Texas.
The state of Texas decided to create a law that banned Planned Parenthood from receiving funding from WHP. The law states that funding from the WHP cannot go to “affiliates of abortion providers”. Planned Parenthood was the only organization named in the law.
As a result of this law, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, cut the federal funding for the Texas Medicaid Women’s Health Program. This is because Texas chose to violate federal law by preventing women from choosing the best available medical provider.
The state of Texas sued the federal government over this cut to the Medicaid WHP funds. Nine Planned Parenthood clinics sued the state of Texas. They felt that requiring all health care providers in the WHP program to certify that they do not affiliate with entities that preform or promote abortions was unconstitutional.
A federal judge in Austin, Texas, has prevented the state of Texas from enforcing a rule that would have prevented Planned Parenthood from participating in the Medicaid WHP. Judge Lee Yeakel said that by requiring the certification that the state of Texas “is reaching beyond the scope of the government program and penalizing plaintiffs for their protected conduct”.
The Texas state attorney general, Greg Abott, immediately appealed to the United States Court of Appeals of the Fifth circuit to life the injunction. A hearing has been scheduled for May 18, 2012.
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