Federal officials have warned two states trying to defund Planned Parenthood that they may be in danger of breaking federal law.
Alabama and Louisiana, along with New Hampshire, have all taken steps to strip Medicaid dollars from the women’s health and abortion provider in the wake of a series of undercover videos highlighting how some of the group’s clinics are involved in fetal tissue donations.
But the Department of Health and Human Services has notified Alabama and Louisiana that their actions may fly in the face of 2011 guidance, saying states can’t discriminate against Medicaid health providers simply because they provide abortions to women using non-federal dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Courts have previously upheld that stance, striking attempts in Arizona and Indiana to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood clinics. States have successfully struck family-planning dollars from Planned Parenthood in the past, but not Medicaid funds.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, was the first to announce his state would cut Planned Parenthood funding, followed by officials in Alabama and New Hampshire.
The defunding efforts were prompted by videos obtained by an anti-abortion group featuring top Planned Parenthood officials discussing how some doctors obtain intact fetal body parts during abortions in order to provide them to biomedical companies, who in turn sell them to researchers.
