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Texas Defunds Planned Parenthood; Court Orders Louisiana To Keep Funding In Place

Texas Defunds Planned Parenthood; Court Orders Louisiana To Keep Funding In Place

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

A video campaign aimed at Planned Parenthood continued to ripple through women’s health services Monday, as Texas officials announced that the Lone Star State would eliminate funding for the organization on the same day a federal court halted efforts in Louisiana to do the very same thing.

The grisly videos released earlier this year by the Center for Medical Progress sought to paint Planned Parenthood as illegally selling fetal tissue for medical research — allegations the reproductive health provider vehemently denied.

The videos showed anti-abortion activists posing as representatives of a biomedical firm and trying to negotiate the purchase of fetal organs from some Planned Parenthood personnel.

The recordings set off protests among anti-abortion Republicans in the House of Representatives, who renewed efforts to cut the group’s federal funding. Most of that funding involves aid to Medicaid patients receiving a range of health services.

Six states that launched their own investigations following the CMP campaign — including Massachusetts, Indiana and Pennsylvania — cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing. Seven states declined to investigate, and 11 others are still looking into the organization’s practices.

Four congressional committees have been investigating Planned Parenthood. The House also voted to form a special committee to examine the organization. Last month, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards was grilled for nearly five hours during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing.

In April, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced that his state would terminate its Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood as a result of the video campaign, saying that the organization “does not represent the values of the people of Louisiana and shows a fundamental disrespect for human life. It has become clear that this is not an organization that is worthy of receiving public assistance from the state.”

The Louisiana Republican, a longtime abortion foe, is running for president.

Planned Parenthood sued to stop Louisiana, and on Monday, a federal district court issued a temporary restraining order to keep Louisiana’s funding in place for 14 days.

In his order, Judge John W. DeGravelles wrote that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast “serves 5,200 poor and needy women, and PPGC has repeatedly been deemed a ‘competent’ provider” by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The organization “honors the public interest in affording these women access to their provider of choice,” DeGravelles continued. Quoting an earlier decision, he said that a “vulnerable population” like the people served in Louisiana “should only be uprooted if practically necessary and legally warranted.”

Also on Monday, the Office of Inspector General at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission announced that the state would end Medicaid participation for Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas.

“Texas has stepped forward and shown its unyielding commitment to both protecting life and providing women’s health service,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a written statement. “The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed in Texas and the barbaric practice must be brought to an end.”

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the Texas action “a national scandal.”

“It is completely outrageous that Texas officials are using thoroughly discredited, fraudulent videos to cut women off from preventive health care, including cancer screenings, HIV testing, and birth control,” Laguens said in a statement. “We will fight back against this outrageous, malicious, political attack in Texas with everything we’ve got, and we will protect women’s access to the health care they need and deserve.”

Photo: Planned Parenthood, already scaled back in Texas, now will no longer recieve state funding. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

James Holmes’ Notebook: Opposing Views Of Aurora Shooter’s Mindset

James Holmes’ Notebook: Opposing Views Of Aurora Shooter’s Mindset

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Day 18 of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting trial was an exercise in the old adage: The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

The book quoted Tuesday from the witness stand in Division 201 of the Arapahoe County Justice Center, however, was not the Bible. Instead, it was an unassuming brown notebook with a metal spiral along its spine and the musings of a mass killer inside.

James Holmes, who is on trial for his life, has acknowledged shooting 12 moviegoers to death and severely wounding 70 others in a Denver suburb on July 20, 2012, in one of the worst mass shootings in American history. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the 166 charges against him.

The prosecution is about halfway through its case against the 27-year-old. More than 150 witnesses have testified, and jurors have heard four weeks of alternating heartbreak and tedium.

Victims have described watching loved ones die, seeing their own limbs shattered, being covered in other people’s blood. Tech experts have testified in mind-numbing detail about IP addresses, how PayPal works and how credit card information lives online.

Jurors have wiped away tears; at least one has been admonished to stay awake.

Holmes’ mental state is the central question facing jurors, and Arapahoe County District Attorney George H. Brauchler has suggested that it would probably be broached this week by those most knowledgeable about it_the psychiatrists and psychologists who have examined the defendant.

But first prosecutors introduced the key piece of evidence in the case: P-TR-341.

Also known as Holmes’ personal notebook, it is full of the shooter’s chilling plans to kill innocent people, his incomprehensible musings about life, death and everything in between, and six pages scrawled with a single word, over and over, larger and larger. “Why.”

Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. ruled that Aurora Police Sgt. Matthew Fyles was not allowed to simply read all 29 pages of notes and diagrams aloud in court Tuesday. Instead, jurors were given copies of the document to read after Fyles testified about the journal.

Prosecutor Karen Pearson walked the sergeant through a description of the book and then asked him to read specially chosen sections.

First Fyles quoted from Holmes’ deliberations about how best to kill the most people. Biological weapons require too much knowledge, Holmes wrote; serial killing, too much contact with victims; and bombs are too well regulated.

The upshot? “‘Mass murder/spree,'” Fyles read. “‘Check mark.'”

Then Fyles read the notebook section about how Holmes chose his target: “‘Venue,'” Fyles read, “‘airport or movie theater.’ Then it says ‘airport’ with an X. ‘Substantial security. Too much of a terrorist history. Terrorism isn’t the message.

“‘The message is, there is no message. Most fools will misinterpret correlation for causation, namely, relationship and work failures as causes. Both were expediting catalysts, not the reason. Causation being my state of mind for the past 15 years.'”

In an effort to convince the jury that Holmes was a thoughtful and sane killer, Pearson also had Fyles read sections about how Holmes methodically considered various theaters in the Century 16 cineplex for his massacre.

The shooter weighed them for their closeness to parking, Fyles told the jury, how inconspicuous Holmes would be while shooting, and how he could “‘lock double doors, inflicting more casualties.'”

And then she asked Fyles to read from page 53 of Holmes’ notebook, a kind of notes-to-self section, a terrifying to-do list: “Buy stun gun and folding knife. Research firearm laws and mental illness. Buy handgun … acquire remote detonation equipment and body armor. Practicing shooting at Byers Canyon Rifle Range.”

Pearson did not have Fyles read the very next sentence.

Instead, defense attorney Daniel King chose to read it himself, after pointing out just how much of the rambling document Pearson had ignored.

The point, of course, is that Pearson’s segments emphasized a cool planner; King’s segments showed a man so sick he did not know the consequences of his actions.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

FILE – In this Monday, July 23, 2012 file photo, James Holmes, accused of killing 12 people in Friday’s shooting rampage in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, appears in Arapahoe County District Court with defense attorney Tamara Brady in Centennial, Colo. With their anger and tears stirred by the sight of Holmes in a courtroom with red hair and glassy eyes, the families of those killed in the Colorado theater massacre now must go home to plan their final goodbyes. (AP Photo/Denver Post, RJ Sangosti, Pool, File)