Judge orders Kansas to restore funding to Planned Parenthood
The GOP war on women suffered another setback today as a Federal judge ruled against the legislation that cut funding to Planned Parenthood. If you are in Kansas you have to ask yourself how are bucketloads of bad social legislation that won’t pass muster at the courts going to create jobs or improve our state?
A federal judge ordered that funding for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri be restored immediately, after a new state law stripped it of funding for non-abortion activities.
A provision in the Kansas budget prioritized family planning funding for clinics that did not perform abortions over those clinics that did, meaning that the region’s Planned Parenthood clinics would go un-funded for the majority of their services. The group would lose an estimated $330,000 in funding per year under the new regulation.
Earlier this month, when the lawsuit between Planned Parenthood and the state began, the state had requested permission to deliver monthly reimbursement payments to Planned Parenthood instead of the usual quarterly lump sum the clinic receives.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled Tuesday evening that the state would have to continue funding Planned Parenthood and that they would do so on the previous quarterly schedule. Without the funding, Planned Parenthood said that their clinics in Hays and Wichita would be unable to provide services beyond this week.