In Indiana: Unborn Babies 2 - Planned Parenthood 0

In the last few days Planned Parenthood has been handed several setbacks in their attempts to be the the biggest killer of unborn babies on our dime. In particular I am talking about events in Indiana.

Recently the Indiana Legislature passed & Governor Mitch Daniels signed House Bill 1210. The bill contains provisions to end all state-directed funding for businesses that do abortions, to protect pain-capable unborn children beginning at 20 weeks, to opt-out of abortion coverage in any state health exchanges required under the new federal health law, to require that women considering abortion be given full, factual information in writing, & to require doctors who do abortions, or their designees, to maintain local hospital admitting privileges in order to streamline access to emergency care for women injured by abortion.

Of course Planned Parenthood of Indiana was not happy. They stand to loose between $2-3 million dollars of our tax money at the least as a result. So on Tuesday afternoon their buddies at the ACLU of Indiana filed for an injunction & temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court on behalf of Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) & its patients. Of course they had to claim it was for the patients & not for the real reason, that PPIN stands to loose all that blood money.

Well, according to the Indianapolis Star, Judge Tanya Walton Pratt has declined to issue the injunction while she takes more time to analyze the legal issues involved in the lawsuit. That means that the millions in cuts takes effect immediately. Also that the abortion provisions would take effect July 1. Judge Pratt indicated that she did not think Indiana officials had enough time to respond to the lawsuit. She also said Planned Parenthood did not show it would suffer irreparable harm without a temporary restraining order.

As I pointed out, the lawsuit was alledgedly on behalf of the patients. PPIN is making the usual claims about how this will deny women health care. In a statement about the ruling PPIN President & CEO Betty Cockrum said that the law affected "Hoosiers seeking preventive, reproductive health care.” “The ruling means that Hoosiers who rely on federal funding have lost access to their crucial and lifesaving preventive health care at Planned Parenthood of Indiana.” She went on to add that “The court’s ruling today means that 9,300 Medicaid patients at our 28 locations have lost services from their preferred provider.”

Of course, the facts aren't quite what PPIN claims they are. While it means that PPIN is no longer an option on the table, women in Indiana still have plenty of options, despite PPIN's scare tactics to the contrary.

Last month Daniels issued a statement about why he planned to sign the bill into law that answered all PPIN's objections.
“I will sign HEA 1210 when it reaches my desk a week or so from now. I supported this bill from the outset, and the recent addition of language guarding against the spending of tax dollars to support abortions creates no reason to alter my position,” Daniels said. “The principle involved commands the support of an overwhelming majority of Hoosiers, as reflected in greater than 2:1 bipartisan votes in both legislative chambers.”
Daniels also said that he “commissioned a careful review of access to services across the state and can confirm that all non-abortion services, whether family planning or basic women’s health, will remain readily available in every one of our 92 counties. In addition, I have ordered the Family and Social Services Administration to see that Medicaid recipients receive prompt notice of nearby care options. We will take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before.”

PPIN is running scared. & rightly so. Previous changes in how Federal Title XX funds were distributed resulted in PPIN loosing over a million dollars. The happy result was that they had to close 6 sites. Of course in talking about it we see another example of PP's creative math. In the 2010 annual report Cockrum claims that they had to make almost $2 million in cuts to finish in the black. But this is after the claim that the reason for the closings, layoffs restructuring etc was the loss of of $1 million+. So why the extra cuts unless the funds were actually being used to insure profitability.

According to that same report their profits, what they call an increase in assets, for FY2010 (unaudited) was $471,847. They describe that as 3% increase in their assets. But there is no mention anywhere of what those total assets are. & how much of it is cash salted away.

But you can see why they are unhappy. If they loose even 1/2 a million dollars they apparently will go in the red. Given how their report isn't exactly crystal clear, it is hard to know exactly where the government money is going. They list under income $2,008,760 from government grants & contracts & $10,955,985 in revenue from patient services. They claim that expenses for patient services were $12,284,674. Since they don't list expenses seperately for the abortion & nonabortion services you can be sure that many of the things that they call expenses, like rent, utilities & payroll, cover them both indiscriminately. & that federal funds didn't just go to the nonabortion portion of expenses. I could go on about how convoluted their annual report figures are, but I have talked about they was PP does things like this many times before. & probably will again.

I do have to comment on 1 other thing in the report though that I see as a complete joke. PPIN is bragging about how it just had an accredidation visit by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. They bragged that they had "once again met the organization’s standards of clinical and organizational excellence, earning it full accreditation status." Given the investigations into Planned Parenthood by Live Action & others over the years showing that PP's standards include covering up rape, incest & illegal prostitution (A PPIN site was 1 of those shown to be willing to cover up statuatory rape), those standards aren't exactly that impressive. & if things are so great, why did they experience "significant improvements since the last visit in 2005, reducing the number of corrections needed by half"? If they met the standards, why the need for any corrections?

PPIN is running scared. & rightly so. But then PP as a whole is scared. With all the recent revelations of how they actually operate, people are less willing than ever to let them have a slice of our tax dollars. & so that is why they are screaming about how this supposedly hurts women's health when they know it doesn't. Fortunately for the unborn, people are seeing through that ploy. & thus their scare tactics aren't working. & with the way these laws are crafted for defunding PP, reducing funds, & putting more limits on abortions, it is getting less likely that the courts will overturn them. PP knows that they are on the run. They deserve to be for the evils they have done. & that is a good thing for all of us, especially the unborn.

Sources: Indiana Gov. Daniels Signs Bill De-Funding Planned Parenthood

BREAKING: Indiana first state to cut off Planned Parenthood funding as Gov. signs bill

Judge Doesn’t Block Indiana Law De-funding Planned Parenthood