HOUSTON (CN) — Texas asked the Fifth Circuit on Monday to vacate an injunction that stopped it from cutting Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, citing a sting video it claims shows the health care provider mishandles aborted fetal tissue.
David Daleiden, 29, is Planned Parenthood’s archenemy. As founder of the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, Daleiden posed as an employee of his biomedical research shell company, and used a fake ID to get into Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) in Houston in April 2015.
Daleiden, who calls himself a citizen journalist and compares himself to the muckrakers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, secretly recorded his discussions with two PPGC directors.
Though Daleiden’s critics say his sting videos are heavily edited, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has repeatedly called the film Daleiden shot at PPGC “raw video footage” that he says shows that Planned Parenthood employees violate ethical and medical standards.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission tried to use the footage as grounds to terminate Planned Parenthood’s more than $3 million in annual Texas Medicaid funding in January 2017.
Medicaid is jointly funded by federal and state governments. More than 4 million Texans are enrolled in the state Medicaid program.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, several Texas affiliates and seven of their Jane Doe patients sued Texas in Austin Federal Court.
Planned Parenthood officials said the cuts would have a “devastating” effect on nearly 11,000 poor people who rely on its 34 Texas clinics for family planning, basic health services, cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
After a three-day hearing, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks granted Planned Parenthood a preliminary injunction in February. He found Texas did not present “even a scintilla of evidence” warranting the termination of Planned Parenthood clinics from the Texas Medicaid program, and that the video evidence was “suspect,” as the health commission had made no attempt to authenticate it.
Texas Assistant Solicitor General Heather Gebelin Hacker told a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit on Monday that the video points to a conflict of interest that by itself is enough to justify yanking Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding.
Hacker said Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s research director Melissa Farrell admits in the footage that an abortion provider with the organization in 2015 had harvested fetal tissue for her own research and “took it home in her cooler.”
Hacker also said the videos indicated Planned Parenthood had altered the timing of abortions, waiting until the fetus reached a certain point of gestation, to procure viable fetal tissue, and had done so despite having patients sign a consent form stating that no modifications will be made to the procedure.
Judge Edith Jones, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, has criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade.