The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Texas and Louisiana are free to withdraw public funding from Planned Parenthood under Medicaid, reversing an earlier ruling that blocked Texas from enforcing its ban.
The court ruled that federal law allows a state Health and Human Services Commission to investigate Medicaid providers for program violations, to determine the provider unqualified, and to terminate its Medicaid provider agreement, “even if the provider is lawfully permitted to provide health services to the general public.”
In 2019, the state of Texas found “noncompliance with accepted medical and ethical standards” in Planned Parenthood clinics after undercover journalists at the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) discovered Planned Parenthood employees in the state were changing patient care in order to sell more fetal tissue. The on-tape admissions from Planned Parenthood employees were then used as the basis by which the state withdrew taxpayer subsidies from the abortion provider under Medicaid.
“The full federal Fifth Circuit’s decision this week confirms that our undercover footage is accurate and reliable evidence of serious criminality in the abortion industry and fetal trafficking enterprises, and it affirms the broad authority that state and federal administrators have to defund entities like Planned Parenthood for illegally selling the body parts of aborted infants,” said CMP Founder David Daleiden in a statement.
The 5th Circuit ruling also reversed a ruling in a separate case blocking Louisiana from banning Planned Parenthood funding.
Writing the dissent, Judge James Dennis concluded that the court’s ruling would “eviscerate Medicaid patients’ freedom of choice,” and would leave millions “vulnerable to unlawful state interference” with their health care providers.
“This ruling is a huge victory in the battle to stop taxpayer funding of America’s biggest abortion business – Planned Parenthood,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement. “The core mission of Planned Parenthood is to destroy innocent human life, the antithesis to real healthcare.”
