The State of Texas has moved to defund Planned Parenthood. Texas Gov. Greg Abbot has given Planned Parenthood 30 days to respond to a notice of intent to remove the clinic from the Texas Medicaid Program in a direct attack on the working class, women and people of color. The current notice is a rehash of an older notice from October 2015 in which Planned Parenthood was first threatened with removal from Medicaid in Texas to the tune of $3.1 million dollars. A lawsuit protected Planned Parenthood from the short notice window, and more than a year later, a second notice has been delivered with a new 30-day mark.
This June, Texans won a victory when the Supreme Court struck down HB2, a law that restricted abortion access under the guise of requiring restrictive regulations on abortion clinics. Most Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, providing primary care for many living in rural areas, would have been shut down by this law. However, since HB2 had already gone into effect before it was deemed unconstitutional, many clinics in the state had already been shut down.
Despite these attacks on reproductive rights, feminists in Texas are not backing down. With President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on the horizon, we must continue to defend abortion access for working class women and people everywhere.
