Solicitor general bases attack on Planned Parenthood on debunked hearsay

[LiberalArkie]

Leslie Peacock yesterday and Linda Satter in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette demonstrated amply that Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge are trying to take Medicaid payments away from Planned Parenthood medical clinics in Arkansas over unproven and wildly misleading allegations made against related organizations in other states.

Arkansas clinics don't do surgical abortions. They don't participate in fetal tissue donation programs. The state has not a shred of evidence that Planned Parenthood operates in any manner but responsibly in Arkansas. Only about 2 percent of its business is legal abortion — by drugs in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. It provides a range of health and contraceptive services at one stop, which the state's new solicitor general, Lee Rudofsky, agreed were available at state clinics only cumulatively, by driving who knows how many miles to who knows how many locations.

But I note this from Rudofsky in John Lyon's account of the hearing at the Arkansas New Bureau:

Arkansas Solicitor General Lee Rudofsky argued that the videos raise concerns about the possibility that Planned Parenthood may be selling human tissue for a profit and altering abortion procedures to ensure it obtains tissue it can sell. One video suggests that tissue was taken from an aborted fetus while its heart was still beating, he said.[/div class]

Snip

Read More at The Arkansas Times