Planned Parenthood and Texas to Duke It out over Taxpayer Monies in Court Now

On Monday, Citizen Link reported that an abortion provider and Texas were slated to duke it out in a court of law regarding whether taxpayers would have to pay for women wanting to kill their unborn in the state.

Has America come to this? Do taxpayers have to pay for baby murder? Texas doesn't think so. Planned Parenthood and the Obama administration say yes they do.

That battle is slated to occur on June 4 now that three separate court rulings have transpired, finally propelling the case to an actual court date.

First, legislators in the state defunded the abortion-providing service after a bill passed which removed state funding for any organization that provided—or was affiliated—with companies who performed abortions. That company turned out to be PP.

The citizens wanted it that way. They didn't want to pay tax dollars in support of murdering the unborn. That didn't mean PP couldn't keep doing it in the state, since Roe v. Wade made abortion legal; they just said they weren't paying their tax dollars to support it.

And that's certainly the right of the state and its citizens in America. If women have the right to murder their children before they are brought into the world, certainly citizens have a right to tell them to pay for it themselves.

Planned Parenthood fought back by initiating a lawsuit against the state to restore their funding immediately while the case wound its way through the court system, as they were going to lose millions of dollars in revenues without that government financial support.

That's because many of the women who choose to kill the unborn can't actually afford—or don't want to pay—for the procedure themselves. They want it done on the taxpayer's dime—at PP clinics.

President Obama helped PP in their efforts to stay on the federal taxpayer gravy train until an appeals court could hear their case by telling Texas they either kept paying PP until then, or they would lose federal women's health care funding as well.

The threat by the president didn't work, however. Texas chose to lose federal funds rather than pay PP to kill unborn babies in their state. They said they would pay for women's health care in the state themselves, as taxpayers were fine with paying for that—they just didn't want to pay for killing the unborn.

This resulted in PP asking an Austin judge named Lee Yeakel to intervene and restore funding until the case could wind its way through the courts, at least giving PP access to all those dollars until then, which Yeakel did, issuing an injunction against Texas.

That led to the third legal maneuver: Texas countering the PP lawsuit injunction by asking another judge to issue a temporary halt to the injunction so PP wouldn't get a dime till the case went to court.

That request was approved by Texas Judge Jerry Smith. But it was only a temporary stay, as Smith asked PP to give a counter argument about why he shouldn't grant the temporary stay to Texas in the matter.

Now that Smith has heard both arguments, according to Citizen Link, he (along with two other panel members of the 5th Circuit) have decided to keep PP funded until the case can be heard in early June, when Texas has promised they will end the women's health care program altogether if the court votes in favor of continued funding of PP.

With $1 billion dollars of its own in assets, PP could easily afford to pay for Texas women's abortions themselves, Citizen Link says, if they were so inclined, of course.

And if they were more concerned about meeting the health needs of women, as they attest, they would certainly do so rather than leaving Texas because they aren't getting taxpayer dollars to do it.

But women's health isn't uppermost in the minds of those running PP obviously, according to Elizabeth Graham, the "Right to Life" Director. She says, "As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, if they can't have the money, then nobody can."

On June 4 Texas and PP will end their battle over whether taxpayers have to pay for abortions of other women. And Texas will win in the end, even if a judge sides with PP, because the state will just end the women's health care program altogether if that happens.

So it looks like Graham is right, "Planned Parenthood is willing to leave Texas women without health care altogether if it means Texas taxpayers aren't going to pay them for their unborn baby killings." Talk about a sense of entitlement by a business. PP should just operate their abortion clinics like other businesses do: with their clients paying for the services they are buying—not people who don't even go there but just live in the state.

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