COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge on Friday blocked an Ohio law that would have diverted the last government funding from Planned Parenthood clinics across the state.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office said it will appeal the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael R. Barrett in Columbus said the new state law infringes on the constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection under the law of Planned Parenthood’s Greater Ohio and Southwest Ohio Region organizations.
The judge made permanent his prior preliminary order in May that prevents the state Department of Health from carrying out its plan to deny 28 Planned Parenthood clinics the last $1.3 million in federal funds it had been sending their way for health services not tied to abortion.
The court pointed to Planned Parenthood’s argument that the loss of funding would endanger its ability to provide sexually transmitted disease and HIV testing, contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, infant-mortality prevention, sex education, and other health services free of charge to patients.
“Plaintiffs maintain that the requirement to pay even a reduced fee will deter patients from seeking those potentially life-saving services,” Judge Barrett wrote. “Plaintiffs would also no longer have access to the juvenile justice and foster-care systems to teach teenagers about healthy relationships.
“... Based on this evidence in the record, this Court finds the irreparable injury is continuing, and there is a lack of an adequate remedy at law because monetary damages could not compensate Plaintiffs for this injury.”
Just three of Planned Parenthood’s Ohio clinics perform abortions: those in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Bedford Heights near Cleveland. But Planned Parenthood argued that all of its clinics were targeted by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and Gov. John Kasich because they make abortion referrals.
“Today’s ruling supports the rights of all Ohioans to access needed health care,” said Iris E. Harvey, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio. “This law would have been especially burdensome to communities of color and people with low income who already often have the least access to care. This law would have made a bad situation worse.
“Politicians have no business blocking patients from the care they need, and today the court stopped them in their tracks.”
Federal and state law already prohibits the use of tax dollars to pay for non-therapeutic abortions.
Ohio Right to Life spokesman Katie Franklin called Judge Barrett, a 2006 appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, an “activist judge” who has fabricated rights out of thin air to benefit the “abortion industry.”
“Judge Barrett’s decision is a clear violation of states’ rights and the conscience rights of taxpayers,” she said. “It is the public policy of the state of Ohio to prefer childbirth over abortion, and we should be allowed to allocate funds accordingly.
“Planned Parenthood has no constitutional right to the hard-earned dollars of taxpayers, millions of whom have deep and abiding objections to the corporation’s pro-abortion business model.”
The state had argued that patients would still have access to nonabortion services from other health clinics that would have received the $1.3 million in federal funding that would have been diverted from Planned Parenthood.
It also maintained that since Ohio is legally permitted to refuse to directly fund abortions, it follows that it could also refuse funding for other services performed by abortion providers.
“There is nothing within the scope of these programs related to performing abortions,” Judge Barrett wrote. The law “cannot condition funding for these programs based on a recipient’s exercise of the right to free speech or association outside of these programs.”
The Block News Alliance consists of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio. Jim Provance is a reporter for The Blade.
First Published: August 13, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
