Via Reuters:
A federal judge in Cincinnati temporarily blocked the implementation of a state law that would have effectively de-funded 28 Ohio Planned Parenthood clinics, in a ruling on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett granted a two-week stay halting the diversion of federal funding in a ruling on a May 11 lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and Southwest Ohio.
The Ohio law signed in February by Republican Governor John Kasich stripped $1.3 million in federal taxpayer funds from any healthcare organization that provides abortion services. The law was scheduled to go into effect on Monday.
The new rules affected funding for Planned Parenthood programs for mothers’ and infants’ health, HIV counseling and testing, and sex education. Planned Parenthood offers abortions in some of its Ohio clinics, but not all of them.
In a 20-page opinion, Barrett said the law was enacted to make it difficult for women to obtain an abortion, and said that Planned Parenthood had shown it could successfully win its legal action.
He wrote that Planned Parenthood would be “forced to end health care and education programs and terminate employees, depriving thousands of Ohioans of high-quality, affordable health care services and education programs.”
It is one thing to issue a legal opinion that’s grounded in, you know, the law but entirely another to come off as a Twitter sock-puppet whom NARAL paid to set up an account.
Judge Barrett couldn’t have been more “Rah-rah!” for the organ harvesters had he been writing the opinion from Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards’ lap. A federal judge who gives credence to the lie that all women’s health care disappears in the absence of a Planned Parenthood fetal organ trafficking mill center is dangerously irresponsible. Unfortunately, the American court system is now polluted with activists who are determined to rewrite law without any regard whatsoever for voters or legislators.
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