Months before Texas’ near-total abortion ban went into effect in September, officials succeeded in their years-long effort to kick Planned Parenthood out of the state’s Medicaid program. The move left thousands of poor Texans without access to birth control and other vital reproductive health services this year. Now, citing the new anti-abortion law, state legislators are urging the Biden administration to intervene.
In letters sent Monday and obtained by the Observer, 71 Democratic members of the Texas Legislature are asking the Biden administration to enforce Medicaid’s federal requirement that patients have a free choice of provider, and ensure that Governor Greg Abbott reinstates Planned Parenthood in the low-income health program. Senate Bill 8–which bans abortion after about six weeks and has eradicated the majority of abortion access in Texas for more than three months–compounds the many existing barriers to reproductive health services for the state’s poorest patients. Many Texans have had to travel as far as California and Ohio for the procedure, or forgo care altogether. “Lives are at risk, and we are calling on the federal government to provide assistance where our state leadership has failed to put Texans first,” the lawmakers write. “Public health should not be treated as a political weapon.”
This February, following a five-year court battle, Texas officials blocked Medicaid patients from obtaining basic preventative health care at Planned Parenthood clinics across the state, citing widely discredited “sting” videos by an anti-abortion group. The ideologically-motivated move left some 8,000 low-income Texans scrambling to access breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and annual exams, amid a deadly global pandemic. While Texas officials argued Planned Parenthood patients would be able to easily find a new Medicaid provider, in reality many struggled. Just 30 percent of OB-GYNs in the state accept all new Medicaid patients, according to a 2016 Texas Medical Association survey, in part due to low state reimbursement rates.
