Planned Parenthood Gets a Reprieve

Smackdown. Texas Republicans received another slam to the mat by a Bush-appointed federal judge today as US District Judge Lee Yeakel ordered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Republican-passed law that restricts Planned Parenthood from receiving state funding, all because it is a miniscule portion of its business to offer abortions to women.

Even though Planned Parenthood scrupulously keeps public funds completely separate from its abortion clinics, because it is the law, the Texas legislature clearly wants to run Planned Parenthood out of the state if not out of business. Even though Planned Parenthood is the sole source of women’s preventative health care, offering PAP smears and mammograms to women who would otherwise not afford it.

This law is the smoking gun of what has become the Republican Party’s War on Women.

Planned Parenthood in its lawsuit, made the case that cutting funding off from them amounted to a denial of equal protection of the law, last time I looked, that was the law of the land. Their constitutional rights were being abridged by the Texas legislature.

But what is even more curious, is that this Dubya-appointed judge didn’t really emphasize this gross infringement of the law. He was mainly concerned that the legislature, in passing this law, was effectively cutting off essential healthcare services to thousands of Texas women.

From the Chron:

“’In balancing the relative harm to the parties and the court’s concern for the interest of the public, the court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women,’ Yeakel wrote.”

Now Republicans can react in one of two ways to this bit of news. They can object strenuously that this federal judge is engaged in federal overreach in a state matter, a likely scenario, and that will only serve to confirm in the minds of half of the electorate that Republicans are indeed engaged in a War on Women.

Or they can just sit back and agree that the judge raises valid concern about what is best for the public interest. Planned Parenthood provides essential services to those who would normally just have to lay down and die from cervical and breast cancer.

Guess which one they will choose?