Arizona bans funding to Planned Parenthood in abortion fight
By David Schwartz
PHOENIX | Sat May 5, 2012 3:19am EDT
(Reuters) - Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a bill banning abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving money through the state, her office said in a statement.
The Republican-backed Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for family planning and health services delivered by Planned Parenthood clinics and other organizations offering abortions.
"By signing this measure into law I stand with the majority of Americans who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for abortion," Brewer said in a statement.
Arizona joins six other states with similar laws, officials said. But three of those states -- Indiana, Kansas and North Carolina -- are facing legal challenges.
Arizona does not provide tax dollars for abortion, but backers said the law is needed to make sure that no indirect monies are funneled to organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide abortion and other health services. There were no estimates of how much money is involved.
But officials at Planned Parenthood Arizona, the state's largest abortion provider, said the law means that thousands of women in the state may now go without life-saving cancer screenings, birth control and basic health care.
"We are most concerned about the women and men who could be forced to go without health care as a result of this bill," Bryan Howard, Planned Parenthood Arizona's president and CEO, said in a prepared statement.
"We remain committed to providing Arizona communities with the professional, nonjudgmental and confidential health care they have relied on for 78 years," Howard said.
The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List called the bill a "major victory" in its fight to bar funding of abortion providers.
"Abortion-centered businesses like Planned Parenthood do not need or deserve taxpayer dollars," Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs for the organization, said in a written statement.
While Planned Parenthood suffered a setback in Arizona, it won a temporary battle in court on Friday with Texas. A federal appeals court ruled that the organization could participate in a health program for low-income women in Texas, despite a new state rule there that bans affiliates of abortion providers.
Let's review:
1) The Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act cuts off funding for women's health services; and
2) A law stating that no tax monies be used to provide abortion services in Arizona is necessary because no tax monies are used to provide abortion services in Arizona.
And coming up next...We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
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Comments
i am willing to go fight em.
they are absurd, these eastasians!
they believe in , uh, self-less ness,, something like that.
some kinda triple think, i think!
i prefer my double think.
on good days when i am not single thinking, ha.
"His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
r./
I've been taken to task on another post for suggesting the majority of voters in AZ are nutjobs. My evidence of that charge, irrefutable evidence I'd say, is the election Jan Brewer. That's why until things change there, I'm opting for a new spelling:
Aryanzona
Men have had their turn to rule, and the result is the wholesale destruction of the Earth. We desperately need nurturers if this assault on the Earth can ever be turned around; nurturers as world leaders,
Arizona is an abomination. I wish they'd secede and take much of Texas with them.
Those who value the legacy of Molly Ivins, may She r.i.p., could move to sane states, however, as Your post, clearly indicates, the number of such states is rapidly shrinking as the war on women continues, unabated .
-R-
r
Dicky, I'd say it's a neck-and-neck race, but at least Texas has you in it. :-)
jmac, I agree! Kill the Freedonians!
James, thanks for providing that excerpt. It makes my brain hurt too. Chilling stuff.
greenheron, it kind of surprised me as well. I never thought of Arizona as much more than a place where old people went to escape bad northeastern or midwest winters and the horrible humidity of summer. I didn't know enough about it's politics to realize it was becoming so militantly right wing.
onislandtime, that's a good question. As I said above in answer to greenheron, I don't enough about its history to be able to figure out why this is happening. (Although to be fair, the war on women is going all over the U.S.)
mark, some nurturing would be great. As we've seen with Jan Brewer, though, having two x chromosomes doesn't guarantee anything!
Thanks, all, for commenting. I was just so struck by the obvious contradictions here.
I used to be proud to live here...
Of all the States in your Union, besides N.Y. State, (which is a stone's
throw from here), I have visited AZ the most. I originally was intrigued by its natural beauty, rock formations. etc. I can honestly say its' politics has become the exact opposite -- ugly. The prehistoric rock formations obviously applies to the government and I doubt I'll ever step foot there again.
It's been around thousands of years!
These clowns think their political views will make life better for their children.
Chances are,one in 5 is incestuously abusing his own children, and does not wis to be found out.
Thus, 20% or more of 'em are trying to keep the lid on their own ugly ways!
We women must RISE to make our government's lobbying power against us shrink.
Hence, we need Obama another term.
Vote, wimmins, VOTE!!!!!
Rated
Family planning is good for society, Arthur. It makes for healthy people and less poverty. If you call that stealing or extortion, then you don't understand what those things mean.
In Nixon's day, a majority of people believed that family planning was important enough to warrant public funding. What has changed since then? Certainly, the need has not gone away. There is always a new crop of young people who need to have these services.
Is it because the economy is so tight? Maybe. But defunding family planning clinics is cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. It may save money in the short-term, but it will end up costing more money in the long-term.
For some reason, people just get their panties in a twist about Planned Parenthood. But they're the ones who pretty much invented family planning, and they're good at it. So they're the ones who get a lot of the government funding. I'm having a hard time seeing why this is a problem.
Also, I don't think that such important things should always be subject to the whim of the majority. The majority can believe some pretty crazy things. The majority used to believe that women shouldn't vote and that black people had to sit at separate lunch counters, after all.
I don't believe anyone has a God-given right to taxpayer money. However, I do believe we have a right to sound public policy that uses taxpayer money efficiently to address social issues.
The state has always been crazy, gotta remember how many federal prisons and air force bases the state mantains (and Haliburton profits).
This is the same that thinks it is ok to sling the dead body of a migrant over the hood of their vehicle becuase "it smelled to bad to put inside."
My Friday night is about to start. Pizza night is a big deal around here, so I'm signing off for now. Please feel free to look at any of my many non-political blogs if you've a mind to. I'm probably done for this evening!