A major claim of the forced birthers seeking to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federally funded reimbursements for the health care it provides women is that other clinics will step in to fill the gap created by this prohibition. It’s a claim that has been proved false in more than one state, and the consequences where Planned Parenthood has been cut off are decidedly unpleasant.
The latest example: a Texas operation run by an anti-abortion ideologue that was supposed to get these other clinics on board in The Lone Star state—and is doing a lousy job of it.
The continuing attack on the century-old Planned Parenthood—which has included numerous fabricated claims, including a doctored video falsely purporting to show that the organization was illegally trafficking in fetal tissue—is driven by the decades-old crusade to end legal abortions.
The procedure constitutes only a small fraction of Planned Parenthood’s health services. Except in rare cases of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or when a woman’s life is endangered, the federal government is already barred from providing reimbursement for abortions through Medicaid.
That’s not enough for the forced birthers. They want to “defund” Planned Parenthood because, they claim, the reimbursement money it receives for other health services—like contraception, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and cancer screening—isn’t really kept separate from money for abortions.
The reality is that the crusaders are simply eager to do all they can to undermine the reproductive rights that Planned Parenthood’s services make it possible for people to exercise.
Although Texas has previously cut Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid reimbursements, a federal district court ruled last month that the organization’s 30 health centers serving about 12,500 Medicaid patients in the state can continue to do so and must be reimbursed.
That’s good news because the state’s effort to get other clinics to fill in for Planned Parenthood through funding the work of a hardcore anti-abortion activist hasn’t worked out very well.
Paul J. Weber at the Austin American-Statesman reports:
Last summer, Texas gave $1.6 million to an anti-abortion organization called the Heidi Group to help strengthen small clinics that specialize in women's health like Planned Parenthood but don't offer abortions. The goal was to help the clinics boost their patient rolls and show there would be no gap in services if the nation's largest abortion provider had to scale back.
But eight months later, the Heidi Group has little to show for its work. An Associated Press review found the nonprofit has done little of the outreach it promised, such as helping clinics promote their services on Facebook, or airing public service announcements. It hasn't made good on plans to establish a 1-800 number to help women find providers or ensure that all clinics have updated websites. [...]
"Every time they try to relaunch one of these women's health programs, without some of the most trusted providers in women's health, every single time they come up short," said Sarah Wheat, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman in Texas. "And they show their lack of understanding and respect for what women need."
The situation with the Heidi Group isn’t unique.
Joseph Potter, the main investigator for the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, looked into the state legislature’s decision in 2011, 2013, and 2015 to dump Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursements. The bottom line of his investigation? Many clinics supposedly on the list of those that would fill in for Planned Parenthood aren’t interested in doing so. As a consequence, “fewer have received contraceptive services, fewer use highly effective methods, some have had unintended pregnancies, and some have had abortions they would not have had if not for these policies,” Potter wrote.
Other states that have sought to cut off Medicaid reimbursements for Planned Parenthood have seen associated problems for women’s health as well.
It’s not hard to see why. Sara Rosenbaum, a professor at George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services, wrote that the "claim that community health centers readily can absorb the loss of Planned Parenthood clinics amounts to a gross misrepresentation of what even the best community health centers in the country would be able to do":
It is important to set the record straight about what it would mean to women were health centers suddenly to have to respond to a hole in care of this magnitude, especially given absurd claims about their financial ability to do so, such as assertions that community health centers could do so for $1.67 per patient. Community health centers are extremely efficient, but the cost of caring for their patients averages about $600 per person annually.
In Indiana, after Planned Parenthood’s reimbursements were cut off in 2011 and five of the organization’s clinics were forced to shut their doors, HIV infections exploded in Scott County. The clinic there, which did not provide abortions, had been the only one in the county testing for HIV.
It all adds up to prove the oft-stated claim of forced-birthers that the array of hundreds of pieces of anti-abortion legislation they have pushed in state after state is meant to protect women’s health is a grotesque lie. And a lethal one.