“U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten, in Wichita, rejected a request from the state to stay his Aug. 1 order until the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver decides whether to overturn it. Marten’s latest order was issued Wednesday.
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri filed a lawsuit over a provision in the current state budget that prevents the group from obtaining federal dollars for family planning. Planned Parenthood expected to lose about $330,000.
Peter Brownlie, the Planned Parenthood chapter’s president and chief executive officer, said Marten’s decision isn’t surprising and said it suggests the state isn’t likely to succeed with its appeal.
“The judge’s decision was quite emphatic,” Brownlie said of Marten’s first order.
The budget provision was among several major anti-abortion initiatives approved by legislators this year and signed by Brownback, a Republican who publicly called upon lawmakers to create “a culture of life.”
The state’s two abortion providers other than Planned Parenthood are involved in their own federal lawsuit over new regulations specifically for hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices performing five or more elective abortions a month. And this week, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to block a new law restricting private insurance coverage of elective abortions.
Brownback defended the anti-abortion measures Thursday, noting they won legislative approval with large, bipartisan majorities.
“You can’t know for sure what all comes out of that afterwards, but it was the will of the Legislature and the people of the state of Kansas,” he told reporters.
The budget provision requires the state to distribute federal family planning dollars first to public health departments and hospitals. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment committed most of the money that had been going to Planned Parenthood to Sedgwick County’s health department.
The provision doesn’t mention Planned Parenthood by name, but lawmakers who backed it said repeatedly that they were trying to “defund” the group. They argued that taxpayers shouldn’t indirectly subsidize abortions, though none of the funds can be used directly for such services.
Planned Parenthood argues in its lawsuit that the provision violates its rights to free speech and due legal process, and it is being punished for advocating abortion rights.
Planned Parenthood performs abortions at a clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, but it provides other services there and at clinics in Wichita and Hays.
Marten said in his latest decision that keeping his order in effect would do little harm to the state, while suspending it “will work irreparable injury” to Planned Parenthood.”
“Culture of Life?” While that phrase is completely nonsensical it’s also quite disturbing. Excuse me, Senator Brownback, you are hoping for a culture of denying people their right to access basic healthcare? For a culture that places more worth on a bundle of cells inside of a uterus than on the person who owns said uterus? A culture built on a foundation of fear-mongering, lies, misogyny, slut-shaming, punishment of the poor, and the erasure of trans* people? A culture that is willing to let people die because they could not access a legal abortion? That does not sound at all like a culture that promotes life, Senator. That is a culture that harms us all.
