While Missouri Senate Democrats filibustered an anti-LGBT measure Tuesday, the state's House Republicans pushed through a budget measure that would defund Planned Parenthood. Alex Stuckey reports:
State Rep. Robert Ross, R-Yukon, spearheaded the move Tuesday to strip almost $380,000 out of the 2017 budget that begins July 1, saying he didn't want any state dollars going toward abortions. That amount, based on 2014 budget year expenditures, includes cervix exams, human papillomavirus vaccines and birth control.
Other states have tried and failed to cut Medicaid for Planned Parenthood services in the past.
"There is a whole litany of things on this list that have nothing to do with abortion and simply has to do with women's health care," said Rep. Gail McCann Beatty, D-Kansas City, on Tuesday. "For the last time, stay out of our uterus."
Amen. Naturally, Missouri Republicans have already launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood's alleged sale of "body parts" that turned up absolutely nothing.
The state has 14 centers that are overseen by two PP affiliates, but only one center provides abortions. Clearly none of that other stuff they do to prevent unwanted pregnancies and provide health care to women matters to GOP lawmakers.
Federal law allows Medicaid reimbursement on abortions only when a woman’s life is in danger or when the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest. The Missouri Planned Parenthood affiliates were reimbursed $126.24 in state and federal Medicaid dollars in 2015 for those purposes.
That $126 that was used to help a woman in some horrific circumstance was worth cutting $380,000 in funding for women’s health care overall. That’s unconscionable. The budget bill still requires one more House vote before being sent to the Senate.