Backers of a woman's right to choose achieved three small but significant victories in federal court this past week. All have received scant notice in the mainstream media and I haven't seen any of the three reported here, so I thought I do that and learn how to do a diary.
The first success was the decision handed down in the Planned Parenthood and ACLU challenge to Indiana's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood of Indiana. Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of Indiana's Southern District granted a preliminary injunction against Indiana's law that would block any Medicaid funding for services rendered by Planned Parenthood. Indiana claimed that it had the obligation to deny PP funding under Medicaid rules that allow states "...to disallow Medicare funding for medical providers based on deficiencies in quality of service." The judge disagreed. Fuller details can be found at Jurist Legal News and Research. The Obama administration has also taken administrative action against the law. In both cases Indiana has appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.
The second success occurred in South Dakota where PP and the ACLU sought an injunction against South Dakota's extreme anti-abortion law, which among other things would require that women seeking an abortion obtain counseling from a "crisis pregnancy center" before proceeding, centers that are sham medical clinics staffed only by untrained anti-abortion zealots. The court granted a preliminary injunction and pointed out that:
Forcing a woman to divulge to a stranger at a pregnancy help center the fact that she has chosen to undergo an abortion humiliates and degrades her as a human being.
You can see more details on this at
the ACLU's national blog.
And the third success was achieved in Kansas where PP and the ACLU challenged the new Kansas law, courtesy of new governor and religious zealot Sam Brownback and the state legislature. PP in Kansas managed to meet the law's requirements at the last minute by purchasing an expensive "neo-natal crash unit". But the two other independent clinics in the Kansas City area sought injunctive relief from US District Judge Carlos Murguia. The law imposed 36 pages of new regulations that if allowed to go into effect would have required architectural changes and major changes in staffing and equipment for clinics, none relevant to providing safe and effective health care to women. An fuller overview can be had at Time Magazine's web site.