A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction against a Kansas law that would strip all federal funding from Planned Parenthood.
District Judge Thomas Marten ordered the state on Monday to immediately resume providing funding to Planned Parenthood facilities until the lawsuit works its way through the courts.
A provision in the state’s budget would require family planning funds to first go to public health departments and hospitals, and not facilities like Planned Parenthood that also provide abortions.
Federal funding is already prohibited from going to abortions, and Planned Parenthood argued that the provision would primarily prevent funding for contraception, cancer screenings, and STD testing for low-income people.
From the Associated Press:
Planned Parenthood said it would be forced to close its clinic in the western Kansas city of Hays unless the court immediately prohibited the state from stripping it of $330,000 in federal Title X annual funding. It contended that its 5,700 patients would also face higher costs and have less access to services and longer wait or travel times for appointments.
Gov. Sam Brownback (R) — who is anti-abortion — was recently dealt another blow when a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against a law that required abortion clinics to be licensed annually under a new set of restrictive regulations by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
