A federal appeals court has told Indiana it must use tax dollars to fund abortions. A law passed by the legislature last year removed the funds from Planned Parenthood.
The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Indiana cannot eliminate the funding just because the abortion giant provides abortions. Indiana became the first state to deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds when Governor Mitch Daniels signed it into law in May 2011.
Mary Spaulding Balch of the National Right to Life Committee tells OneNewsNow today's ruling is disappointing.
"The most troubling aspect of the decision is that now the Indiana taxpayers are being forced by court order to continue to pay for abortions," she laments. "Whether it's direct or indirect, Planned Parenthood is going to have more money to spend that will enable them to do more abortions -- and that is obviously troubling."
Balch is hopeful the Indiana legislature will revisit the law.
"You don't have to fund all non-profit organizations in your state," she explains. "What you can do is figure out a system where the money that you are using for tax dollars is going towards something that you really want to support."
The Texas legislature developed a law that allowed de-funding of Planned Parenthood, and that law has been upheld by the Fifth Circuit. Balch concludes it is all a matter of how the legislation is worded.
Appeal to SCOTUS?
Indiana Right to Life spokesperson Mike Fichter tells OneNewsNow his organization is encouraging Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We did find a silver lining in it in that the court does give Indiana the right to keep Planned Parenthood funding out of state block grants, but that's the small chunk of the money," Fichter explains. "The big chunk was in Medicaid funding -- and unfortunately the federal courts are now forcing Indiana to include Planned Parenthood in all of its Medicaid funding."
The law to defund the abortion business, he says, represents the majority will of the people of the state.
"What you have here are unelected federal judges telling the state of Indiana what it must fund, even though the vast majority of duly elected Indiana legislators voted for this legislation," says the pro-life leader. "It passed by a huge margin -- and yet here we have a federal court stepping onto the sovereignty of Indiana telling it [that] it must send Medicaid funding to the state's largest abortion business."
Fichter's guess is that the legislature will want to see the case work its way through the Supreme Court before considering any additional legislation.