Planned Parenthood supporters will deliver petitions to Gov. Asa Hutchinson at noon Friday asking him to reconsider his order to end state Medicaid payments to the organization for family planning services because its unreimbursed services include abortion.

Hutchinson has said repeatedly he won’t reconsider the decision. Other states have sued and Arkansas seems likely to join them after his order takes effect next week.

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Suzanne de Baca, president of Planned Parenthood, will speak along with a second-year medical student who has received services from Planned Parenthood,which received about $50,000 in Medicaid reimbursements last year.

More than 300,000 women in Arkansas need affordable family planning services in a state with a high teen pregnancy rate. PP says that, of the 4,400 patients it serves every year, 99 percent received contraceptives and about a quarter of those were paid by Medicaid. Quick biology lesson: Effective contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies and, thus, abortion.

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The group’s release:

With less than a week until Governor Hutchinson’s illegal order that will block Planned Parenthood from the state Medicaid program, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland patients, supporters, and allies will gather at the state capitol on FRIDAY at 12PM CT to deliver petitions calling on the Governor to put politics aside and protect women’s access to care at Planned Parenthood.

This political grandstanding by Governor Hutchinson and his allies could have real and devastating consequences for the nearly 1,000 Planned Parenthood patients who access health care through Arkansas’s Medicaid programs. Arkansans who rely on Planned Parenthood for birth control, cancer screenings, STD tests and other lifesaving care. The politicians behind these reckless policies have allied themselves with extremists who will stop at nothing to end access to abortion – breaking laws, pushing misinformation, and violence and harassment of women and doctors.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has warned officials in other states that it is against the law to bar women from accessing care at Planned Parenthood because the organization provides safe, legal abortion. Similar laws have consistently been struck down.

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