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Sedlak also noted that on a national level, the number of full-scale Planned Parenthood health clinics continues to decline.

"As best we can determine, PP had 825 such clinics in December 2005, down from 836 a year earlier," he said. "This is the lowest number that PP has had since 1987, when it had 816 such clinics.

"We know that Planned Parenthood is consolidating its clinics into larger central offices and opening express satellites, but even if we add in all the express sites, Planned Parenthood still has 66 fewer clinics today than it did in its peak year of 1993, when it ran 938 clinics," Sedlak added.

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) announced on Jan. 10 that Richards, a liberal political activist and the daughter of former Texas Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, has been named the organization's new president.

In its announcement, the PPFA noted that Cecile Richards has a long history of work in the abortion rights community. She created and directed a national pro-choice ID project for the Turner Foundation and has served on the boards of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Richards also founded the Texas Freedom Network, which describes itself as "a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of more than 23,000 religious and community leaders" that "advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right."

Richards did not return repeated calls seeking comment for this article.

However, Sedlak said that he expects the new PPFA president to focus mainly on national issues. "She will try" to have an impact on abortion policy in the Lone Star State, Sedlak predicted, but "she won't be successful because Texas is a very conservative state," he added.

Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, told Cybercast News Service that he sees Richards as an "added obstacle" to his organization's efforts.

"She knows a lot about Texas politics, and she knows a lot about the Texas Legislature," Poyman said, but "she doesn't have a background in health-care providing, so she's a little bit of a fish out of water in her new position."

But because Texas is Richards' home state, Poyman said he's sure "it's very dear to her heart, and she'd like nothing more than to make abortion even more available, including actually being paid for on demand with our tax dollars."

And while Poyman agrees that the Texas Legislature's reallocation of $13 million "has taken some wind out of their sails," he noted that Planned Parenthood "has a long track record of receiving state and federal dollars. That's one reason they're so enormous, and they're not going to go down quietly."

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