In addition to barring poor women from using Planned Parenthood in Texas for general medical services, the state of Texas — in raids coordinated with accompanying news reporters — has gone after medical records of poor women who’ve received abortions.
It’s an outgrowth of the so-far vain hunt for illegalities in tissue donations to medical research by women who’ve had abortions.
Women’s medical rights, privacy and dignity are meaningless to the Republican crusaders.
Planned Parenthood in Arkansas doesn’t perform clinical abortions and doesn’t participate in tissue donation. But that hasn’t stopped the Hutchinson administration from attempting to stop it from providing basic medical services to poor women who prefer them as a health provider. We’ve also reported previously on Sen. Jason Rapert’s efforts to dig into medical records of abortion providers in Arkansas. This effort, like the assault on women’s rights in Texas, is aimed eventually at interrogating women who’ve received medical services from Planned Parenthood. What they can’t make happen by law, they’ll make happen by coercion, intimidation and threat of exposure.
At risk here is not just a right to abortion, but ready availability of contraceptives. Because contraception is in the target of anti-abortion groups, too. They say contraception doesn’t decrease demand for abortion (?????) and thus family planning services are no excuse for the existence of Planned Parenthood.