The First State That Tried to Defund Planned Parenthood Is Officially Giving Up
After a legal battle that has stretched over the course of two years, the state of Indiana has agreed to put an end to its efforts to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood clinics. Indiana was the first state that attempted to target the national women’s health organization by blocking it from receiving state-level Medicaid dollars for the services it provides to low-income women.
In 2011, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) signed a law to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funding simply because it is an abortion provider — even though that money actually funds general health screenings for thousands of low-income women, not abortions. That sparked a national trend. Anti-abortion lawmakers in states like Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, and Texas followed suit, enacting similar laws intended to defund the women’s health organization by excluding it from their states’ pools of public insurance providers.
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