The Texas Tribune: Texas Lawmakers Set to Restore Women’s-Health Financing

Eddie Seal for The New York Times

Esmeralda Garcia, a health care assistant at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Edinburg, speaks with a client, Adriana Olvera.

The political fireworks and high-octane drama that accompanied lawmakers' 2011 fight over women's health care and abortion have been absent this legislative session. They have been replaced with some semblance of concession, as legislators on both sides of the aisle work quietly to restore financing for women's health services.

Expanded coverage of Texas is produced by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization. To join the conversation about this article, go to texastribune.org.

Reynaldo Leal for The Texas Tribune

Medical records in La Joya. More than 50 Texas clinics closed after the state's family-planning budget was cut by two-thirds.

They have done it with little more than a handshake agreement. Democrats will not die on the sword of bringing Planned Parenthood back into the fold, and Republicans will not put up additional barriers to women's access to care.

"The major difference is we're not fighting about it. We're just doing what's right for women and the state," State Representative Sarah Davis, Republican of West University Place, said last month at a Texas Tribune symposium on health care.

There has not been a drawn-out public debate on abortion or women's health in either chamber this legislative session. None of the 24 abortion-related bills filed have reached the House or Senate floor. And Ms. Davis, the only Republican member of the House Women's Health Caucus, brokered a bipartisan grand bargain, as lawmakers refer to it, to prevent amendments to the House budget bill that could have jeopardized an agreement to restore women's health dollars.

For some Republicans, this bargain hinged on the ballot box: Ms. Davis said several of her colleagues had faced blistering attacks after last session's family-planning cuts — an effort, in part, to drive Planned Parenthood out of business — closed clinics in their districts that were not affiliated with abortion providers.

Ms. Davis, a breast cancer survivor who opposes abortion but will not support legislation she believes interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, said the best way she had found to help low-income women was "to remove emotion" from the debate. The arguments about abortion and Planned Parenthood in 2011 "did not advance the ball," she said. "In fact, it just threw family planning into a tailspin."

Bolstered by the Tea Party's gains in the state's 2010 elections, last session's ultraconservative Legislature approved a law requiring women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram and hear a description of the fetus at least 24 hours before the procedure. In a targeted effort to exclude Planned Parenthood and other clinics affiliated with abortion providers from taxpayer-financed programs, lawmakers also cut the state's family-planning budget by two-thirds.

As a direct result, 117 Texas family-planning clinics stopped receiving state financing and 56 of those clinics closed, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who are conducting a three-year study to evaluate the Legislature's policy changes.

The researchers estimate that 144,000 fewer women received health services and 30,000 fewer unintended pregnancies were averted in 2012 than in 2010. The state's savings from the programs dropped by an estimated $163 million.

"A lot of people really felt they got snookered by some of the people in the pro-life movement about that family-planning issue," said State Senator Bob Deuell, Republican of Greenville, who has been a strong advocate for restoring family-planning financing for low-income women by way of primary care.

Dr. Deuell, a primary care physician, is an ardent opponent of state money going to Planned Parenthood clinics. But he said the vitriol of some abortion opponents last session had prevented the state from pursuing good policy decisions. He recalled being compared to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, when he argued that cutting family-planning services would lead to more unwanted pregnancies, and therefore more abortions and more children living in poverty.

In the tentative 2014-15 state budget, which is being worked out in conference committee, lawmakers have devoted more financing to women's health services than before the 2011 budget cuts. The House version of the budget doubled financing for family-planning services to $75 million, while the Senate version increases financing to $43 million. Both chambers have added $100 million to a state-run primary care program to serve women of all ages and set aside $71 million to support the Texas Women's Health Program, formerly the Medicaid Women's Health Program, which lost a $9-to-$1 federal match over state leaders' decision to eject Planned Parenthood clinics from it.

baaronson@texastribune.org

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