Gov. Asa Hutchinson has directed the Department of Human Services to terminate Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood. “Termination will be effective thirty days from the date of the letter attached,” Hutchinson said in statement. The feds have recently told two other states that this maneuver violates federal law [Actually, they said ‘may.’ See below – ML].
You think that a Democratic governor Mike Ross (the guy Asa Hutchinson beat last year) would have done this, if the vote had gone the other way last year? – No, me neither. Ross certainly wouldn’t have provoked a possible showdown with the feds. And note that the correct term is ‘possible:’ contra that link above, the reality of the situation is that the federal government is carefully saying that the states may be violating federal law.
“CMS has notified states who have taken action to terminate their Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood that they may be in conflict with federal law,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Ben Wakana said in a statement.
Louisiana and Alabama are the other two states involved; and certainly both Louisiana and Arkansas are pointing out that their contracts with Planned Parenthood have a clause that dictates that they can break those contracts for any reason or none. It’s actually interesting: the court cases have largely gone Planned Parenthood’s way on this particular topic. You’d legitimately expect there to be less parsing by the government here.
Still. The important thing, in the end, is that we must make it clear that we don’t approve of harvesting babies. We don’t approve of murdering children for their organs, we don’t approve of the modern-day vivisectionists that profit off of those murders, and we certainly don’t approve of the people who have sunk so low as to defend baby harvesting. I retain sympathy for people who are pro-choice. I have none at all for people who are pro-abortion. And if this current atrocity has done anything, it has demonstrated that there are people are really and truly the latter.
And more of them than we thought, God help us all.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Back when I named my first son Ara, the next two would have been Asa & Ira.
Changed last names so that didn’t work any more.
However, I am pleased that Asa (though never used by me ) seems to have been a strong name choice.
And will just note that my grandson Aiden’s nickname of choice is Ace.
There is a difference between pro-choice (safe, legal & rare) and pro-abortion.
Really ready for the pendulum to swing back to the states in the federal model.