New Planned Parenthood Head Faces Home State Clinic Cuts -- GOPUSA

New Planned Parenthood Head Faces Home State Clinic Cuts
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
January 20, 2006

(CNSNews.com) -- The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is marking the 33rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22 with a new president. However, even as Cecile Richards takes the reins of the nation's most frequent provider of abortions, the organization may be forced to curtail services and even shut down clinics in an ironic location: her home state of Texas.

The likely cutbacks are the result of amendments to the two-year budget passed in 2005 by the Texas Legislature that shift $13 million in federal funds disbursed by the state from "individuals and entities that perform elective abortion procedures" to Federally Qualified Health Centers. The latter are described in the budget as offering "comprehensive primary and preventive care" in addition to family planning services.

The process of reallocating Planned Parenthood funding actually began in June 2003, when Republican state senators Steve Ogden and Tommy Williams sponsored a budget amendment that denied money to any family planning organization that provides abortions.

Planned Parenthood quickly filed a lawsuit to maintain its funding, and in August of that year, the federal district court in Austin granted a preliminary injunction preventing the amendment from taking effect.

In March of 2005, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original measure as constitutional, but the decision permitted clinics that provide abortions to create independent "affiliates" that would continue receiving money to provide other services.

That prompted state Sen. Robert Deuell to sponsor Rider 31, an attachment to the 2006-2007 budget that states:

"It is the intent of the Legislature that no state funds shall be used to pay the direct or indirect costs (including overhead, rent, phones and utilities) of abortion procedures provided by contractors of the department.

"It is also the intent of the Legislature that no funds appropriated under Strategy B.1.3, Family Planning Services, shall be distributed to individuals or entities that perform elective abortion procedures or that contract with or provide funds to individuals or entities for the performance of elective abortion procedures."

After both the amendment and the state budget were approved, Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region stated on its website that, "the leadership of the Texas Legislature has once again let down the working families of our state.

"In an irrational and unprecedented move, our extremist leadership has carelessly diverted critical health care funding that is relied upon by thousands of Texas women," the statement added.

Jim Sedlak, executive director of American Life League's STOPP International, told Cybercast News Service that newspapers across Texas have been "moaning" about the impact the $13 million loss will have on Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state, which presently operate 78 clinics.

"If these news accounts are to be believed, we may be seeing the closure of a large number of these clinics in Texas during 2006," Sedlak said.

"Other states have successfully removed Planned Parenthood funding in slightly different ways with great success," he said. "Now, Texas joins Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota and Mississippi as states that provide no tax funding to Planned Parenthood."

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."