Texas is a state run by Republicans who don’t like Planned Parenthood because the health care provider also operates abortion clinics. In Congress, Republicans are trying — so far without success — to cut off approximately half a billion dollars of Medicaid reimbursement to PP nationwide. In Texas, they’ve not only cut PP off from Medicaid, they’ve gotten even more vicious:
“Members of the Texas Office of the Inspector General made unannounced visits at Planned Parenthood health centers in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio [on Thursday], staying in some cases for several hours and giving Planned Parenthood 24 hours to deliver thousands of pages of documents stored at its facilities across the state, the organization said. … ‘We believe this is a fishing expedition,’ Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region Chief Executive Officer Ken Lambrecht told a news conference in Austin, calling the request ‘politically motivated.’ Lambrecht said Texas had requested what Planned Parenthood sees as unnecessary information such as the home addresses of all its employees as well as their salaries and bonuses.” Read the story here.
This is akin to what those Oregon bakers who refused to sell a wedding cake to a lesbian couple were fined for:
“In testimony Tuesday, Rachel Bowman-Cryer said she and her wife received death threats as media attention and criticism from strangers escalated in the months after the story went national in January 2013. She said the threats were part of a stream of “hateful, hurtful things” that came after the couple’s contact information (home address, phone and email) was posted on Aaron Klein’s personal Facebook page. She said she feared for her life and her wife’s life.” Read that story here.
Once the Texas officials have that list of PP employees’ home addresses, it can readily be leaked, or become a public record. The effect of putting someone’s personal information out there in public is to paint a target on them. It effectively says to deranged lunatics, “There they are; go get them!”
What kind of people would do that? Republicans, that’s who.
Photo: Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is overseeing state raids of Planned Parenthood offices as part of an effort to force the organization to shut down. State agents have broken into offices, seized documents, and demanded the home addresses of employees. Why do they want that information? To harass the employees, of course.