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Kansas Cuts Planned Parenthood Funds; Alternate Providers Uncertain

Planned Parenthood's contract for Title X funding in Kansas ends this week.
Photo by Elana Gordon
/
KCUR
Planned Parenthood's contract for Title X funding in Kansas ends this week.

By Elana Gordon

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-975256.mp3

KANSAS CITY, Ks. – For more than three decades, Planned Parenthood has been one of the places where low income Kansans can go for state-subsidized family planning services - things like birth control, pap smears, and STD testing. But starting Friday, Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas will no longer get public funds for such services. That's when state legislation, aimed at taking funds away from clinics that provide abortions, kicks in. But as KCUR's Elana Gordon reports, some clinics that never provided abortion will be cut. And, it's created a fear that poor women in parts of rural Kansas will have a harder time finding affordable family planning services.

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Last month, Kansas joined just a handful of other states in approving legislation that effectively bars Planned Parenthood from receiving public funding, instead directing it to public health departments, federally qualified health centers, and hospitals.

The so-called Title X funding which Planned Parenthood has received is a federal program, allocated through the state, to provide things like discounted cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, and pregnancy tests to low-income women.

Mary Kay Culp, director of the anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, has been trying get a ban on public funds to Planned Parenthood for years.

"It offends the sensibilities of the tax payers that are funding it," says Culp. "And there's really no reason to send Title X money to Planned Parenthood when it can go to local health clinic that are providing the whole spectrum of services to people that are indigent and need to get services that way."

Kansas receives about $3 million annually in Title X funding. Of that, Planned Parenthood gets about $335,000. Peter Brownlie, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, says those Title X funds have specifically gone to providing discounted family planning services to about 5,800 women a year at their Wichita and Hays clinics. And while such services help prevent women from getting pregnant who don't want to, neither place offers abortions.

Brownlie says Title X accounts for up to a half of their Wichita and Hays budgets. Losing that, he says, threatens their ability to provide services long-term on a sliding scale.

"The major impact is not on Planned Parenthood. We're here, we've been here, we're going to be here," says Brownlie. "The impact is on women with limited resources, with few choices and places to go, who are going to find it more difficult to get health care."

In Hays, especially, Brownlie says he worries about what the alternatives will be.

"Part of the difficulty is there aren't other providers that have the capacity, the staff, and infrastructure to provide those services there," says Brownlie.

One place those funds could go is the Ellis County Health Department in Hays.

Butch Shlyer is the director there. He doesn't think his agency could handle it.

"We don't provide any family planning services. Planned parenthood has filled that niche very well," Shlyer says. "In this department, we just don't have the capacity to do it. I don't have the space and the staff."

Shlyer says it would take up to five years to develop the ability to provide such services.

In the Kansas City region, health departments do get Title X funds.

Planned Parenthood does not use such public funds at its clinic in Overland Park, which provides abortions.

But Brownlie says the new ban is also illegal. Just yesterday, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the state, saying the new policy violates federal law and the constitutional rights of their patients.

The effort follows a similar challenge in Indiana, where a judge recently ruled that state could not cut funds to Planned Parenthood. But that legislation is different from Kansas'. Indiana's specifically bans Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood, something which federal officials in charge of Medicaid already warned Indiana they couldn't do.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is not the only place in Kansas affected by the new Title X policy.

"They called me about two weeks ago and then fed-exed me a letter saying we would know longer be funded as of June 30."

Karla Demuth is director of Dodge City Family Planning in southwestern Kansas and says her clinic is a casualty in the battle over planned parenthood.

Dodge City Family Planning doesn't offer abortions, only basic women's reproductive health services. But the new legislation directs funds only to health clinics which offer comprehensive care and health departments.

Demuth, a nurse practitioner, says Title X currently makes up about half of her budget. She says come Friday, she doesn't know how she'll be able to continue providing discount services to the some 600 patients that go to her clinic annually.

"You know, I've worked with these women for 14 years, and they've become part of our family," says Demuth. "And we just worry about what's going to happen to them. They're the low income and often don't speak English."

Demuth says she hopes whoever gets those Title X funds in that region will hire her.

Meanwhile, overseeing this entire re-allocation process is the Kansas Department of Health. Miranda Myrick is a spokesperson:

"We are working hard to find those alternate providers."

But with three days left before contracts with Planned Parenthood and Dodge City Family Planning end, Myrick says the department has not determined who will get the money afterwards. And in response to Planned Parenthood's new lawsuit against the state, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback issued a statement saying he's committed to upholding the new law.

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