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Planned Parenthood has said some fetal tissue is donated for medical research. Such donations are illegal in Ohio, and a Planned Parenthood state leader has said no donation program exists here.

DeWine's office found no evidence that the group made money from aborted fetuses, but the report instead criticized Planned Parenthood facilities for disposing of fetal remains in landfills.

DeWine told reporters on Friday the disposal practice is callous and violates state rules requiring that fetuses be disposed of in a humane manner. He plans to seek an injunction Monday to prevent Planned Parenthood from disposing of fetal remains in landfills.

Planned Parenthood called the alleged wrongdoing "inflammatory." The organization said it follows Ohio law and uses the same practices as hospitals and ambulatory surgical facilities, which generally contract with outside companies to dispose of all medical waste.

Stephanie Kight, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said the disposal process is handled safely and respectfully. She said Sunday the tissue is processed and sent to a solid waste facility that's specifically licensed for medical material, not a typical landfill.

In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said it's always abided by the directive that fetal tissue be disposed in a "humane" manner and has never been cited by the Ohio Department of Health, which licenses abortion facilities in Ohio, for violating those regulations.

Attorneys for Planned Parenthood accused the state's health director, Richard Hodges, of abandoning his standard process of providing notice of alleged non-compliance and providing an opportunity to correct such issues. Planned Parenthood said it didn't hear from health officials about the alleged violation until the group reached out to them Friday.

"This sudden and targeted treatment is no doubt motivated by his animus to a woman's right to safe and legal abortion and to Planned Parenthood in particular," the attorneys wrote.

Planned Parenthood has asked the court to block the state from any taking action and allow Planned Parenthood to work with the health department to sort out any issues related to the regulations.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Ohio House planned a Monday news conference to announce legislation following the attorney general's investigation.

Abbott said that canceling Medicaid participation for Planned Parenthood in Texas moves the state closer to “providing greater access to safe healthcare for women while protecting our most vulnerable – the unborn.”

Planned Parenthood has long said that its fetal tissue donations are legal, since the organization did not accept payment for the donations beyond the reimbursement of costs. On Oct. 13, Planned Parenthood announced that it will no longer accept reimbursements for expenses related to donated fetal tissue. “Planned Parenthood’s policies on fetal tissue donation already exceed the legal requirements,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote in a letter to the National Institutes of Health. “Now we’re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda.”

The record-tampering charges accused Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt of making and presenting fake California driver’s licenses, with the intent to defraud, for their April meeting at Planned Parenthood in Houston.

Abortion opponents claimed that the videos, which were released starting in July, revealed that Planned Parenthood was engaged in the illegal sale of body parts — a charge that the organization has denied and that has not been supported in numerous congressional and state investigations triggered by the release of the videos.

In a statement on Monday night, Mr. Daleiden said: “The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws. We respect the processes of the Harris County district attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well. Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.”

The release of the videos last summer created a furor and gave new strength to the conservative drive to defund Planned Parenthood. The organization was forced to apologize for the casual tone that one of its officials had used to discuss a possible transfer of fetal tissue to what she believed was a legitimate medical company. But Planned Parenthood said the fees being discussed were to cover costs and were legal. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story

The Planned Parenthood facility has frequently been a scene of protests since a series of videos secretly recorded by a conservative group showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal organs for research.

Colorado Springs is an area of fast growth about 60 miles south of Denver and home to an Army base and Air Force base.

The local news media reported that the gunman had been firing at passing cars from the parking lot of the clinic.

Referring to Planned Parenthood–which was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger–as the “go-to place” for abortions for black women, Clinton said that when taxpayer funding for abortion services is blocked by federal law, “the people who are going to suffer the most are going to be low-income women of color, that’s just the fact.”

In a much-cited report released early in 2014, New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that more black babies were aborted in the city than were born during the year 2012.

Planned Parenthood’s recent historic endorsement of Clinton as a primary candidate comes following a series of undercover videos exposing the organization’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies on the open market and altering the position of babies during abortions to harvest the most intact organs.

"They don't have a massive eraser pen. They've got to go through the rule-making process," said Allison Orris, a former Obama administration official and counsel with Manatt Health, a professional services firm. "They are going to have to think about what comes first, second and third and be realistic about timing."

Plus, the Biden administration may opt to keep and continue several Trump administration efforts, including shifting to value-based care, rather than paying doctors for every visit and procedure, and increasing access to telehealth,

The two administrations also share common views on some measures to lower drug pricing, including basing Medicare payments on the cost of prescription medications in other countries and importing drugs from abroad. But Trump officials have not actually put these proposals in place.

While Trump focused on dismantling the Affordable Care Act, Biden will emphasize expanding the law and access to health coverage.

The Trump administration took the historic step in early 2018 of allowing states to require certain Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive benefits. Eight states have received approval, seven have pending requests and four had their waivers set aside in court, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Biden's Health and Human Services secretary would be able to unwind the approvals, but it is a complicated task, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. The secretary would have to determine whether to withdraw permission for the entire waiver or just certain features.

Several of these waivers included other provisions that could make it harder for low-income Americans to retain Medicaid coverage, such as lockouts for non-payment of premiums.

One executive order Trump repeatedly points to is expanding short-term health plans, which typically have lower premiums, but provide less comprehensive coverage and don't have to adhere to the Affordable Care Act's protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

"The short-term plans have important symbolic significance because they restrict coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, which was a prominent political issue in the campaign," said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In its first year in office, the Trump administration slashed funds to promote Obamacare open enrollment and to assist consumers with selecting plans by 90% and 84%, respectively.

The Biden administration is expected to reverse all these measures to curtail Obamacare.

Biden has promised to revoke the Trump administration rule barring federally funded health care providers in the Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions.

Biden has vowed to reverse the so-called Mexico City Policy, a ban on funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions, which Trump reinstated and expanded during his tenure.

The Trump administration reinstated the measure -- which had previously impacted only family planning assistance -- in 2017 by presidential memorandum and extended it to all applicable US global health funding under the "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance."

The Biden administration is also expected to reinstitute a directive that states cannot bar Medicaid funds from going to qualified providers that separately provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood.

Trump also signed a bill in 2017 allowing states to withhold federal money from organizations that provide abortion services, including Planned Parenthood.

The Trump administration has been particularly hostile toward transgender Americans. Among its most criticized moves was an effort earlier this year to rollback an Obama-era regulation prohibiting discrimination in health care against patients who are transgender.

Biden's LGBTQ policy plan also says he will work to expand funding for mental health services for LGBTQ Americans and that his administration plans to automatically enroll low-income LGBTQ people in the public option, once it's created, if they live in rural areas in states that didn't expand Medicaid.

include eyewitness descriptions accompanied by borrowed footage of a fetus dying in a metal bowl

goal is to conceal the fact that late-term abortions offend the conscience when discussed or displayed with anything like journalistic accuracy

videos weren't merely "edited" but "highly edited."

the videos were "misleadingly edited" and "inaccurate."

Biden said his position had changed in response to changing circumstances, including increasing efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict abortion. "It was not under attack," Biden said. "As it is now."

At the same time, Republican state lawmakers have continued a nationwide push to limit abortion, introducing hundreds of restrictions this year alone. Anti-abortion rights groups hope one of those laws will invite the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.

The budget plan, released late last week, would drop the policy which has restricted funding for abortion through federal programs such as Medicaid. The rule, in effect since 1980, includes exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or to save a pregnant woman's life.

Biden, a lifelong Catholic, supported Hyde for decades — as did many other Democrats, often as a compromise position with Republicans. It often has been a sticking point in negotiations over healthcare policy, including the debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act and subsequent legislation.

Later that month, in a forum on abortion rights hosted by Planned Parenthood in South Carolina, Biden explained his reversal, saying he'd supported Hyde in an effort to expand federally-funded healthcare. But he suggested that for low-income women who rely on federal programs, Hyde had become an obstacle to full healthcare access.

Promising to reverse multiple Trump-era abortion restrictions, Biden ultimately marshaled the support of Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights advocacy groups, who put the weight of their campaign operation behind him in his fight against Trump in 2020.

Since taking office, Biden has taken steps toward providing federal funding for abortions for low-income people. Like other Democratic Presidents before him, Biden announced plans soon after taking office to reverse the Mexico City Policy, or what critics describe as the "Global Gag Rule." It forbids international aid groups who receive U.S. funding from providing or referring patients for abortion.

Abortion rights groups are asking the administration to take additional steps, including reversing the Helms Amendment, which also restricts the use of U.S. dollars in paying for abortions abroad.

But four years after the support of women re-elected Barack Obama, the general electorate may be different

Women voters, who are, as a whole, slightly less likely to pick Republicans in a presidential election, could be motivated to turn out for Hillary Clinton, particularly if they are women of color, the backbone of the Democratic party.

Trump’s sexist remarks, compounded with his demands for Obama’s birth certificate and desire to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, could be motivation enough. 

Though national polls only give a limited picture in a country that doesn’t elect presidents by a popular vote, recent surveys that pit Clinton against Trump show a marked gender gap

Trump’s pronouncements make Akin look like a diplomat. But the very audacity and vulgarity that seems to delight Republican voters could disgust in a national race.

Conversely, Trump’s conditional support of Planned Parenthood – which he has repeatedly said is good for women but should not get federal funding because its affiliates also provide abortions – may be an attempt to reach those same general election female voters

Planned Parenthood, whose PAC has endorsed Hillary Clinton, has flatly resisted Trump’s advances. 

“Women would lose access to birth control, could be charged more than men for health insurance, could have domestic violence and pregnancy disqualify them from health insurance coverage, would no longer be able to turn to Planned Parenthood for care, and would be banned from accessing abortion safely or legally,

It is, after all, the right-wing radio, TV and Internet fever swamps that have gotten them into this mess, that have led to massive misinformation, disinformation and cynicism among Republican voters. And draining those fever swamps is the only way to get them out of it.

If Republicans truly want to save the Republican Party, they need to go to war with right-wing media.

they need to dismantle the media machine persuading their base to believe completely bonkers, bigoted garbage.

The sickness in today’s Republican Party is not confined to its current standard-bearer.

Among just Trump voters, 7 in 10 believe government economic data are fabricated. Half don’t trust that votes will be counted accurately in the November election.

Republicans and Trump backers didn’t come to these conclusions independently. They learned them from the influential TV, radio and Web outfits whose imprimaturs Republican politicians desperately seek, and whose more troubling content these politicians have been reluctant to criticize.

Data trutherism — claims that the economy is worse than the official numbers indicate, that polls are “skewed” to favor Democrats, that hurricane forecasts are exaggerated to scare the public into fearing climate change

Never-ending witch hunts — against Planned Parenthood, climate scientists, Hillary Clinton — similarly galvanized supporters in the near term but increased bloodlust for punishment of political enemies in the long run.

And unless the party establishment grapples with its own complicity in misinforming, misleading and frightening the masses, it’s doomed to field more Donald Trumps in the future.

The real revelation on Wednesday, however, was the way some of the candidates went beyond expounding bad analysis and peddling bad history to making outright false assertions, and probably doing so knowingly, which turns those false assertions into what are technically known as “lies.”

the truly awesome moment came when she asserted that the videos being used to attack Planned Parenthood show “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” No, they don’t. Anti-abortion activists have claimed that such things happen, but have produced no evidence, just assertions mingled with stock footage of fetuses.

I began writing for The Times during the 2000 election campaign, and what I remember above all from that campaign is the way the conventions of “evenhanded” reporting allowed then-candidate George W. Bush to make clearly false assertions — about his tax cuts, about Social Security — without paying any price. As I wrote at the time, if Mr. Bush said the earth was flat, we’d see headlines along the lines of “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”

Bitter fighting over the law last summer propelled state senator Wendy Davis into the national spotlight, and she is now running for Texas governor on the Democratic ticket.

The last restriction under the law goes into effect Sept. 1. All clinics that provide abortions at that point must have upgraded their facilities to ambulatory surgery centers. Busby says many can't afford it and more will close.

"This would basically force all the clinics to become mini-hospitals," Busby said. "They have to have hallway widths a certain length, and a janitor's closet, male and female locker rooms, which is completely unnecessary — and a bunch of other regulations that are really not appropriate or do anything to increase the safety of one of the safest procedures in the country."

Supporters of the law said it would protect women by making abortion safer. At the time of the law's passage, The Texas Tribune quoted Republican state Sen. Donna Campbell saying, "There's nothing in this legislation that will close a clinic. ... That's up to the clinic. If they want to put profit over a person, that's up to them."

Busby said abortion is already one of the safest office-based medical procedures, with a complication rate of less than .05 percent.

Busby predicted that after September only six or eight places will be left in Texas to get an abortion, unless a lawsuit stops the new requirement from going into effect.

Whole Woman's Health is part of that lawsuit. The group previously had six reproductive health clinics in Texas but had to close two of them over the past year, Busby said.

It may have to close an additional three clinics that don't meet the new surgical center specifications, in Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio. It would be left with just one, in San Antonio, that meets the new requirements.

Busby noted there are now no clinics that provide abortions in all of East Texas or in the Rio Grande Valley. She said the one clinic left in El Paso could close soon.

In Houston, the newly built headquarters of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast does fulfill the ambulatory surgical center requirements, so it will remain open. But the status of smaller clinics remains unclear.

all that does is increase the psychological stress for her, and that’s not healthy.”

Huffman’s “Housewives” character spent one episode trying to bribe her twins’ way into a private school, BuzzFeed points out (for $15,000 — is that how Huffman knew it was the going rate?), and so, the story goes, of course Huffman would do the same in real life.

The most vomitous line in the whole indictment comes from a dad — New York attorney Gordon Caplan — who tells a witness on the phone, “To be honest, I’m not worried about the moral issue.”

Radar ran an anonymously sourced article in which a family friend says Macy “didn’t know the details, but he knew she was trying to do something. . . He wasn’t fully aware of what she was planning.” Truly, I’m not sure which is a worse scenario for Macy: that he blithely participated in an alleged illegal plot, or that he blithely participated in an entire phone call in which the alleged illegal plot was hatched and apparently didn’t know what anyone, including himself, was talking about.

in terms of moral dissonance, Felicity Huffman is the most surprising villain, and the one whose motives I keep trying to unpack.

Huffman created the website What the Flicka, dedicated to parenting. Specifically, to being a mom. Even more specifically, to being a real, relatable, imperfect mom.

WhatTheFlicka.com is a land of sardonic coffee mugs and wine-o’clock-Wednesdays, and scented candles with names such as “Juice Cleanse” that purport to smell like “greens, mint, and regret.” The articles about parenting have headlines such as “10 ways I’m totally screwing up my kids” and “10 reasons to dread summer with kids” and “9 ways parenthood is like ‘Game of Thrones.’ ”

In other words, the site buys into a children-are-a-battlefield theory of parenting. Parenthood is impossible, and making it to bedtime without becoming an alcoholic is an excellent reason to reward yourself with a martini. We are all a hot mess!

In Felicity’s mind, did she do something at odds with her theory of motherhood, or was the alleged scamming an extension of it? Was allegedly buying her kids’ way into school a twisted, privileged version of, Ladies, amiright, sometimes we serve frosting for dinner and sometimes we bribe Georgetown?

“Ruh Ro!” she chirpily wrote in an email to her contact in the scam. “Looks like [my daughter’s high school] wants to provide own proctor.” It was a problem to be solved, practically and without much fuss.

It was meant, as the Supreme Court described it in 1975, “to free widowed and divorced mothers from the necessity of working, so that they could remain home to supervise their children.”

Eligibility was determined by states and localities, which found various ways to exclude Black women. With the civil rights revolution in the 1960s, however, more Black mothers were able to receive benefits.

But universal day care programs that would help women work didn’t go anywhere either. In 1971, Congress passed a bill that would have created a national network of high-quality, sliding-scale child care centers, akin to those that exist in many European countries. Urged on by Patrick Buchanan, Richard Nixon vetoed it, writing that it would “commit the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family‐centered approach.”

Ever since, efforts to expand government-supported child care have faced furious opposition from the religious right.

At the same time, many on the right, driven partly by concerns about low birthrates, have awoken to the crushing financial burden of parenthood. The public policy debate is thus no longer whether to subsidize child rearing, but how. Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act, for example, would give parents $350 a month for each child under 6, and $250 a month for children between 6 and 17, up to $1,250 per family per month.

With the laissez-faire economic assumptions that dominated America since the Reagan administration discredited, Democrats no longer cower when the right accuses them of fostering big government. As Biden said in his address to Congress on Wednesday, “Trickle-down economics has never worked.”

This doesn’t mean that the American Families Plan is going to happen. With little chance of any Republican support, it would have to be passed through the reconciliation process, so its fate likely lies in the hands of Joe Manchin, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat. Still, it’s amazing that it’s suddenly possible that American parenthood could actually become a less financially brutalizing experience.