Officials with the Texas Office of the Inspector General carried out a series of raids today on Planned Parenthood facilities across the state, but refused to tell anyone why they had done so.
The raids were carried out at Planned Parenthood health centers in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio just days after the state GOP leaders decided to prevent the women’s health group from receiving any state Medicaid money.
Earlier this week, Texas Governor Greg Abbot said:
“The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed.”
However, Abbot did not provide any proof that this so-called “harvesting” was taking place.
In response, Planned Parenthood remarked that Texas was
“Looking for an excuse to take health care away from thousands of women and men who rely on Planned Parenthood for preventive care.”
Earlier this month, Texas health officials sent a letter to Planned Parenthood in which they said all Medicaid funding, would be withdrawn because of what the state characterized as “program violations” captured on videos made by the Center for Medical Progress. Those videos have since been discredited because they were selectively edited and may also have been filmed in violation of privacy law.
So we set yet again that the Republican Party, which loves to shout about keeping government out of the lives of Americans, does not hesitate to impose government into the private decisions of women across this country. Hypocrisy? Most certainly, but it is more than that.
What the GOP craves more than anything is to make women the birthing vessels for their own brand of authoritarian rule. They will not rest until they can impose their perverse will on the most private medical decisions a woman will ever make. For this and countless other reasons, Republicans are destroying their own party and attempting to eliminate the most fundamental rights we have as Americans.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore for Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
