Nearly two years after being rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican legislators are making a new bid to βdefundβ Planned Parenthood.
Senate President Andy Biggs said Friday he believes the organization is using the money it receives for providing family planning services to subsidize abortions. Biggs said the only way to keep that from happening is to ensure that Planned Parenthood gets no state dollars at all.
But 2012 legislation designed to do just that was slapped down by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 32-page written opinion, the judges said Arizona cannot cut Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program simply because the organization also provides abortions paid for with other funds.
And in early 2014 the nationβs high court refused to overturn that ruling.
βThere are ways to tighten up the language,β Biggs said. But the Senate president conceded he does not actually have anything drafted.
But Bryan Howard, president of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said it really doesnβt matter what new version is being crafted by Biggs and state Reps. Eddie Farnsworth and Warren Petersen, both Gilbert Republicans.
βThey have a record of failing spectacularly at doing end runs on the U.S. Constitution and federal law,β he said. Howard pointed out that, in losing the last lawsuit on this subject, state taxpayers had to reimburse Planned Parenthood for $200,000 in legal fees.
Biggs said he also will sponsor another bill making the sale of fetal tissue illegal under Arizona law. At this point there is no such state law, with the sale of fetal tissue for profit a crime only under federal law.
The only state law on the subject makes it illegal to use a human fetus or any parts after an abortion for any medical experimentation or investigation.
Both measures come months after videos surfaced purporting to show officials from Planned Parenthood organizations β none from Arizona β negotiating the sale of body parts.
Howard said his Arizona organization does not deal in fetal tissue, whether for sale or donation.
State and federal laws already bar public funds from being used for elective abortions. Instead, Planned Parenthood gets Medicaid dollars β about 90 percent of it from the federal government and the balance from the state β to cover everything from gynecological exams to contraceptive counseling.
βPlanned Parenthood, regardless of what they claim, it appears, anyway, that they are subsidizing their abortion services because they canβt segregate all the money they get from Medicaid and state and federal tax dollars from regular services to their abortion services,β Biggs said.
In the 2013 appellate court ruling, Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, did not address the question of whether Medicaid funds were subsidizing abortions.
Instead, she said, the issue comes down to a simple fact: Federal law allows those enrolled in Medicaid to get their services from any qualified provider.
Attorneys for the state conceded that point. But they argued that lawmakers can conclude Planned Parenthood is not βqualifiedβ to provide family-planning services because it also provides abortions.
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