ST. LOUIS, Missouri, March 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Defunding Planned Parenthood will cost taxpayers money, according to the group's CEO, Cecile Richards.
Richards spoke in response to Missouri lawmakers, who passed a budget preventing abortion providers from receiving state Medicaid reimbursements for other services.
“We provide family planning services to tens of thousands of women here in Missouri,” Richards said this weekend while campaigning in the state for Hillary Clinton, whom the group endorsed in January.
The law “won’t hold up in court,” Richards told the audience.
“They’re wasting both taxpayers’ money and the voters’ time,” she said.
Her words indicate that abortionists intend to sue the state for curbing its budget by $380,000.
That's less than Richards' $590,928 annual salary. However, judges have prevented states from defunding Planned Parenthood in Louisiana, Utah, and Indiana in the past. And the Obama administration has issued a legal opinion that such laws violate federal statutes and could result in states losing all Medicaid funding.
Missouri state legislators say their amendment reflects the popular will that public funds should not be used to underwrite abortion providers in any way, whether funding abortion directly or paying ancillary services that pad the group's bottom line.
“The taxpayers in the state have made it very clear; they do not want their tax dollars going to support abortion services,” Marsha Haefner, R-Oakville, told the press last week, as the state passed a $27 million budget.
The CEO's statement that cutting the budget would cost people money is not her first head-scratcher in defending public funding for the nation's largest abortion provider.
Richards had previously said that defunding Planned Parenthood hurts “expectant mothers and newborns.” That came in response to Ohio Governor John Kasich signing a bill last month that cost Planned Parenthood of $1.3 million a year in government revenue.