The Missouri Senate passed a budget Wednesday that would strip Planned Parenthood of state funding. The legislation passed 25-7, and will need to pass the House before it can be signed by Governor Mike Parson.
Missouri is also considering legislation that would ban Planned Parenthood from receiving funding through Missouri’s Medicaid program. “It fully defunds Planned Parenthood pursuant to the Supreme Court decision, giving guidance to the Legislature and also enacts protections at the state level to ensure that your tax dollars are not subsidizing the heinous act of abortion,” Nick Schroer, who sponsored the Medicaid bill, said earlier this year.
It’s an important move to make, as the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Planned Parenthood cannot be defunded through the state budget.
Sen. Jill Schupp expressed her belief that defunding Planned Parenthood “has nothing to do with abortion,” according to the Associated Press. Instead, she claims, “It has everything to do with women being treated in this state like second-class citizens.”
Instead of funding Planned Parenthood, the budget would give billions of federal dollars to the public school system, allocate $444 million for childcare, and would approve extra funding for Medicaid, which was recently expanded by voters to include more eligible patients.
READ: SHOCK: Just 3% of women of reproductive age in the U.S. go to Planned Parenthood
The sole Planned Parenthood facility in the state of Missouri has been allowed to remain open, despite efforts to close it due to the dangerously high number of women who have been injured there. At least 75 women who visited the facility have suffered botched abortions, with ambulance calls increasing even as abortion numbers decreased. At least four women experienced serious, life-threatening complications after the body parts of aborted children were left inside them, while another woman nearly bled to death after abortionists attempted an abortion while her placenta partially covered her cervix.
A previous senate investigation also found numerous health and safety violations, including instances in which women were told not to call 911 if they experienced complications or injuries.
“[P]lanned Parenthood’s own internal files reveal a shocking callousness toward vulnerable young women who seek their services. In fact, the procedures outlined in the materials reviewed may very well constitute outright medical malpractice,” the Senate report read, concluding, “All of this indicates that Planned Parenthood is far more worried about the reputation, business model and public relations efforts than they are about the women in their care. It is difficult to conceive of any other organization, let alone an organization that holds itself out as providing women’s health services, being so recklessly indifferent to the health of their patients as to put such directives as those listed above in print for the use of their employees.”
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