By Dave Andrusko
Judge Thomas Marten
As surely as swallows return to Capistrano, pro-abortionists challenge pro-life laws. In “Judge Hears Arguments over Texas’ New Sonogram Law,” we talk about a suit filed by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights. In this entry we talk about three others, and the responses made by the various states.
At the request of the Kansas Attorney General, U.S. District Judge Thomas Marten yesterday agreed to postpone Friday’s first hearing over a portion of the 2012 Kansas state budget that directs that family planning services financed in any way under “Title X” federal rules must be contracted primarily with public health clinics and secondarily with qualified non-public hospitals or health centers that provide comprehensive health care–primary and preventative. No firm new date for the hearing has been set.
In its suit Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri—by far the state’s largest abortion provider–alleges that the law violates its free speech and due process rights. The organization claims the new requirement will prevent it from receiving $331,000 in family planning dollars.
Part of similar suits is the assertion that if Planned Parenthood does not receive Title X money, patients will lack access to family planning clinics. But state attorneys said the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has already given $204,000 to Sedgwick County to expand its family planning services.
“The attorneys also said in their filing that an unnamed clinic in Ellis County also has agreed to accept some of the money that would have gone to Planned Parenthood,” the Associated Press’s John Hanna reported. “The state’s lawyers said those developments show that patients will not go without family planning services because of the budget provision, as Planned Parenthood had suggested. In fact, the state’s attorneys said, Planned Parenthood ‘has made no showing, nor could it, that family planning services will not be provided.’”
In Arizona attorneys for the state agreed not to begin enforcing new state laws regulating chemical abortions until Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama can consider arguments by Planned Parenthood contending that the new statutes are unconstitutional. At the August 22 hearing “Gama will need to decide whether to issue an injunction, placing the laws on hold while the case goes forward, or permit them to take effect,” reports Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services.
The laws prohibit nurse practitioners from performing chemical abortions (which account for about half of the abortions in Arizona) and require clinics that perform chemical abortions “to satisfy state requirements on personnel, equipment, facilities and procedures that previously were imposed only on clinics that perform surgical abortions.”
In North Carolina, pro-lifers last month overrode Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of the state budget which included a provision to strip all federal and state money from Planned Parenthood. Earlier today Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina—one of two state PPFA affiliates—filed a lawsuit in federal court to invalidate that part of the new state budget that cuts it off from federal or state funds.
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