Earlier this week, the Obama Administration officially put pressure on 10 states that have enacted laws to defund Planned Parenthood.
According to National Right to Life, six states—Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas—have notified the abortionist organization they were terminating its participation in their respective Medicaid programs. Four others have taken other avenues to cut off taxpayer funding.
All 10 received letters from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, NRL noted:
Stories in publications such as the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal explain that the CMS sent a letter to state Medicaid directors stating, “Providing the full range of women’s health services [abortion] neither disqualifies a provider from participating in the Medicaid program, nor is the provision of such services inconsistent with the best interests of the beneficiary, and shall not be grounds for a state’s action against a provider in the Medicaid program,” the letter said.
The Washington Post noted that although the CMS has communicated with individual state Medicaid offices in the past, “this is the first time the agency has warned all the states collectively, officials said.”
Planned Parenthood has successfully sued some of the states. Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards has been very vocal about the defunding effort, as well, issuing the following statement in response to the CMS letter.
“In recent months, these political attacks on our patients have gone from a simmer to a rolling boil,” she said. “What politicians couldn’t do in Congress, they’re now trying to do state by state, jeopardizing the health and well-being of more than half a million people in the process.
“Once again, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has made it clear that it’s illegal for politicians to tell women where they can and cannot go for care. Make no mistake: For the past nine months, politicians have been waging a political war on access to health care, putting the health and lives of women at risk in the process.”
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