By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Just hours after Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a law that cuts off all taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider filed for a temporary restraining order to block implementation, but a federal judge has refused to grant it.
LifeNews.com is reporting that Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis declined to issue the injunction because she wants more time to analyze the legal issues involved in the lawsuit. She indicated she did not think Indiana officials had enough time to respond to the lawsuit and said Planned Parenthood did not show it would suffer irreparable harm without a temporary restraining order.
This means Planned Parenthood’s funding stream of anywhere from $2 to $3 million will be cut off immediately.
Other provisions in the law are scheduled to go into effect on July 1. These include a provision to ban abortions after 20 weeks to protect pain-capable unborn, 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, and to require doctors who do abortions, or their designees, and to maintain local hospital admitting privileges in order to streamline access to emergency care for women injured by abortion.
Planned Parenthood argued that the law was unconstitutional, that it violates existing contracts it has with the state and forces Planned Parenthood to choose between doing abortions and getting taxpayer funding.
Sue Swayze, legislative director of Indiana Right to Life, told the Indianapolis Star, “We’ve done some legal research ourselves and think that it’s going to stand. It might actually, once approved, become a model for the rest of the country.”
The law, known as the Schneider Amendment, states that no state agency may enter into a contract with or make a grant to “any entity that performs abortions or maintains or operates a facility where abortions are performed that involves the expenditure of state funds or federal funds administered by the state.”
Planned Parenthood of Indiana currently operates three abortion clinics in Indianapolis, Merrillville, and Bloomington that collectively account for over half of Indiana’s roughly 10,000 abortions each year. Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s annual operating budget regularly exceeds $15 million. The defunding provision of the new law would impact an estimated $3 million of that funding but would have no impact on its revenue from abortions and other services or direct private support.
Indiana Right to Life President Mike Fichter told Life News that Planned Parenthood’s request for a restraining order was nothing more than “an attempt to use the courts to force Indiana to continue subsidizing its abortion operations.”
“This is a delay tactic intended to keep public funding flowing to Indiana’s largest abortion business as long as possible,” he said. “We are confident that Indiana will successfully defend this statute and that all state-directed funding will eventually be ended for Planned Parenthood and all other abortion businesses in Indiana.”
He also believes Planned Parenthood’s legal action proves that, in spite of what they say, abortion is central to their overall business plan.
“Planned Parenthood consistently claims that abortion is a small part of its operations,” says Fichter. “If that were true, it would simply need to stop doing surgical and chemical abortions in Indiana to remain eligible to apply for state-directed funding. It is clear that they do not wish to walk away from the revenue stream created by over 5,000 abortions every year in Indiana.”
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