Compromise helps avoid family-planning skirmish
The Texas House avoided a protracted, potentially volatile debate Thursday when both sides of the abortion issue agreed to withdraw about a dozen family-planning amendments from consideration.
The bipartisan agreement, brokered before Thursday’s lengthy slog through 267 filed amendments to the 2014-15 state budget, was designed to protect $100 million set aside for primary health care, including contraceptives, for low-income women, said Rep. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, who helped negotiate the agreement.
“I didn’t think we needed another floor fight on abortion and family planning,” Davis said. “Hopefully, I saved us about six hours (of debate).”
It was a far different budget battle in 2011 when eight Republican-sponsored amendments stripped $61 million from family-planning initiatives for low-income Texas women in an effort to starve Planned Parenthood of state money. Fiery opposition from Democrats mattered little as the amendments were
emphatically approved by the GOP majority.
Debate over that action, however, only intensified afterward as the funding cuts were blamed for the closure of more than 50 family planning clinics statewide since 2012, all but 14 unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood.
State health officials estimated that the cuts and closures will result in 23,760 Medicaid-paid births to low-income women who lost contraceptive coverage.
Davis, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday that she pressed to dedicate $100 million to fill a vital need, noting that health officials estimate that 170,000 low-income women will receive screenings for cancer, hypertension, diabetes and other preventive care in addition to contraceptives.
“I wanted to make sure that money was protected, and I thought the best way to do that was to have no floor discussion whatsoever on women’s health issues,” she said.
Rep. Jessica Farrar, DHouston, agreed. Farrar withdrew four amendments targeting pregnancy resource centers, which strive to counsel pregnant women to con- sider alternatives to abortion, stripping away $8.3 million to apply toward family-planning initiatives and similar programs.
“I just didn’t want women’s health to continue to be a political football,” Farrar said. “What are you going to gain from a fight? I’ve told people on my side that only bad stuff can happen. We are so outnumbered.”
The $100 million for women’s health care would fall short of meeting the contraceptive needs of Texas women, Farrar said, and is a step back from the $111 million dedicated solely to family planning before the 2011 cuts were imposed.
“It doesn’t restore us. It doesn’t fix things. But,” she said, “we’re better off than we were before.”
Several Republicans withdrew family-planning amendments as well, including one by Rep. Dwayne Bohac, RHouston, to add $2.7 million for pregnancy resource centers.
Republicans were comfortable restoring women’s health funding because the budget bill specifies that the money cannot go to abortionrelated businesses, said Rep. Bryan Hughes, RMineola, who helped coordinate the floor fight to cut family planning spending in 2011.
“Now we have it ironclad in the law that this money cannot go to abortion providers and their affiliates,” Hughes said.