Posted on 08/01/2018 9:59:54 AM PDT by Morgana
Arkansas taxpayers won another victory in court Monday when a federal judge rejected Planned Parenthood’s argument against defunding it of Medicaid dollars.
Arkansas moved to strip the abortion chain of taxpayer dollars in 2015 after undercover videos exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts trade. The abortion chain sued, but in November, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a victory to the state.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker also ruled against the abortion group by rejecting its new request for a preliminary injunction against the state, Arkansas Online reports.
Baker is the same judge who initially sided with Planned Parenthood in 2015.
Here’s more from the report:
[N]early a year ago, on Aug. 16, a divided three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis vacated both of Baker’s preliminary injunctions, which were based on the clinics’ arguments that the termination violated the plaintiffs’ rights to obtain health-care services from the provider of their choosing.
The 8th Circuit panel said that federal law doesn’t create an enforceable federal right for individual patients.
That prompted Planned Parenthood to pursue a new preliminary injunction under alternative grounds. Those grounds — that in denying the use of state and federal funds to cover services for poor and disabled people, the state was violating those people’s equal protection rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, and that the termination was intended to penalize the provider for advocating for reproductive freedom and/or associating with abortion, in violation of the First Amendment — were rejected by Baker late Monday afternoon.
Though frustrated by the ruling, an attorney for Planned Parenthood in Arkansas said they will not give up.
“We are going to keep fighting,” attorney Bettina Brownstein said. “They’re never going to beat us.”
In 2015, Planned Parenthood received more than $51,000 in taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments in Arkansas. In 2017, its facilities saw about 750 Medicaid patients and received taxpayer funds for those visits, according to Arkansas Online. Even though the funding does not go to abortions directly, it frees up money in the abortion chain’s budget to promote and perform abortions.
When the state defunded the abortion business in 2015, Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed his outrage at the abortion chain’s barbaric practices.
“It is apparent that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state, and Arkansas is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them. This includes their affiliated organization, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma,” the governor said at the time.
Hutchinson said he decided to end their contracts after videos surfaced showing top Planned Parenthood executives haggling over the price of aborted babies’ body parts, admitting to altering abortion procedures to procure better organs for harvesting and casually discussing ways their doctors can “crush” unborn babies to better obtain fully intact body parts.
Late last year, Judd Deere, a spokesman for state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, emphasized to the Democrat Gazette the importance of states being allowed to cut of tax dollars to groups engaging in unethical practices.
The 8th Circuit Court ruling “reaffirms that Planned Parenthood and the three patients it recruited could not contest in federal court Arkansas’s determination that a medical provider has engaged in misconduct that merits disqualification from the Medicaid program,” Deere said in November.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, performing more than 320,000 abortions on unborn babies every year. Its most recent annual report showed a record income of $1.46 billion, with about half a billion dollars coming from taxpayers.
Bump!
Sounds unconstitutional!
What does the 9th circuit say about this?
Outstanding!
Planned Parenthood sure thinks it’s entitled.
I guess it thinks it’s part of the government.
Stop any, and all, government funding of abortion, and let the recipients pay for it.
If the price was like $3500 for each abortion, that would slow it down quite a bit. Condoms, pills, etc., are much cheaper than using abortion as birth control.
Aside from appealing to SCOTUS does Planned Parenthood have any other legal recourse? I don’t understand how they were able to appeal a circuit court ruling to a (lesser?) Federal court.
Note that the AMA came out Pro Abortion in articles and releases o the press
Others commented that the AMA does not represent all doctors
What does the Hippocratic oath say, Do no harm and more
But then I guess that is a “Doctor” can make some coin ripping babies out of mothers wombs they can more easily pay dues to the AMA
Friggin hypocrites
“They’re never going to beat us.”
Oh yes we will, sweetie.
L
-PJ
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, performing more than 320,000 abortions on unborn babies every year. Its most recent annual report showed a record income of $1.46 billion, with about half a billion dollars coming from taxpayers.
ABOUT TIME!!
Deo gratias!
Nope, not tired of winning yet.
I think there actually could be a compromise on the abortion issue. One that both sides could, perhaps reluctantly, live with.
Let’s start here;
It is that exception that is the compromise that would allow both sides to live within the law.
Free abortions should be provided to any woman who, in the last General Election for President, was a registered Democrat.
using baby parts for science experiments should be a big boost for pro life millennials. many already are against late term abortion.
“First, do no harm” is not a phrase that appears on the Greek Hippocratic Oath that has come down to us. However, there is in it a specific prohibition against abortion (check the Wikipedia article). Funny how rarely that gets mentioned.
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