Planned Parenthood Takes Funding Fight to Nation’s Courts

Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit last week against Ohio’s revocation of funding for the non-abortion health services provided by the nonprofit’s clinics is the 15th the group has filed since July amid a wave of state-level restrictions, with more court challenges likely to follow in the coming months, Bloomberg writes.

Sixteen states, all but three controlled by Republicans, have moved to cut funding to Planned Parenthood since anti-abortion activists’ release last summer of undercover videos purporting to show that the organization profited from the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood denied the allegation, and a string of state investigations have cleared the nonprofit.

The Ohio case concerns the withdrawal of $1.3 million in federal family-planning money under a law signed in February by Gov. John Kasich that bars state agencies from contracting with abortion providers. It came on the heels of a suit in Kansas over a move in March to terminate Planned Parenthood clinics from the state’s Medicaid program. “To put this in perspective, we typically file around three to six cases a year,” Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the nonprofit’s chief medical officer, said in announcing the Ohio case.