Texas Sues Biden Admin Over Forcing Pharmacies to Provide Abortion Pills
TX AG Ken Paxton: “The Biden Administration knows that it has no legal authority to institute this radical abortion agenda, so now it’s trying to intimidate every pharmacy in America by threatening to withhold federal funds.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued President Joe Biden’s administration over its decision to force pharmacies to sell abortion pills.
The Department of Human and Health Services (HHS) told pharmacies they need to provide the pills “in order to stay in compliance with the Biden Administration’s view of federal law.”
The pharmacies “would face the loss of Medicaid and Medicare funds” if they fail to abide by the administration.
Paxton stated: “The Biden Administration knows that it has no legal authority to institute this radical abortion agenda, so now it’s trying to intimidate every pharmacy in America by threatening to withhold federal funds. It’s not going to work. Texas and several other states across the country have dutifully passed laws to protect the unborn, and we are not going to back down just because unelected bureaucrats in Washington want to create illegal, extremist federal policies.”
Biden’s administration has scrambled to save the ability to murder unborn human beings after the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24. Our “devout Catholic” president stands behind the moves.
Attorney General Merrick Garland immediately said, “States may not ban Mifepristone [RU486]” despite SCOTUS ruling that “[t]he Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion.”
However, Texas and other states took action once Roe v. Wade went away, passing their own abortion laws.
The Texas Human Life Protection Act says a “person may not knowingly perform, induce, or attempt an abortion” unless the woman “has a life-threatening physical condition” if the pregnancy puts her “at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed.”
So how does one usually get someone to do his or her bidding?
Money.
That’s where Medicare and Medicaid funds enter the conversation. Paxton lists other reasons why the Pharmacy Mandate is illegal, but using Medicare and Medicaid funds affects everyone because those are our tax dollars:
The Pharmacy Mandate stipulates that “as recipients of federal financial assistance, including Medicare and Medicaid payments, pharmacies are prohibited under law from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability in their programs and activities. This includes supplying prescribed medications; making determinations regarding the suitability of prescribed medications for a patient; and advising a patient about prescribed medications and how to take them.”
The Pharmacy Mandate requires pharmacies to dispense abortifacients as a condition of receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments by threatening pharmacies with legal action.
The Pharmacy Mandate violates the Hyde Amendment:
The Pharmacy Mandate also conflicts with the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits use of federal dollars to fund abortions except when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or if the woman’s life is in danger. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-103, Div. H., Tit. V, §§ 506–07. By conditioning pharmacies’ receipt of federal funds on their dispensing of abortion-inducing drugs, Defendants’ Pharmacy Mandate uses federal dollars to fund abortions outside the allowable scope of the Hyde Amendment. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-103, Div. H., Tit. V, §§ 506–07.
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Comments
There are two bad guys in this story. I’d expect the Texas republicans to be voted out too.
Well, if you are a resident of Texas (as unlikely as that might be), you obviously reside in Moscow on the Colorado (AKA Austin). It certainly is possible for current Republican office holders to be voted out, though for the immediately foreseeable future that would be in the Primary and not the General Election.
And this is why allowing the nationalization of everything was a very bad idea from the start. Medicare has no constitutional authority, and it’s also a very bad centralization of money, power, and control. (Same with Medicaid, welfare of all sorts, Social Security, etc.)
The Founding Fathers got a lot right. But the limited federal government that they intended didn’t work out.
So, federal over-reach is a thing?
When do The Supremes get around to overturning their decision that President Peanut withholding funds to impose what he couldn’t directly wasn’t coercion.
President Peanut? Carter and the Highway Funds over 55mph?
And the same power was used to have states set the drinking age at 18 (and probably for an infinite number of other things). As a child of that era, I had to drive from Maryland (21) to D.C. (still 18). Then went to college in Louisiana (18, and with beer kegs on the school meal plan on Monday nights). Then the deadline hit and it went to 21.
“President Peanut? Carter and the Highway Funds over 55mph?”
Yeah, that’s what I was referring to. They’ve been using this scam like crazy ever since. “We’ll take it out, but you only get your cut back if you do what we want. And The Supremes say that’s not coercion.”
I’d say the lower-your-thermostat Malaise-Peanut originated this but there’s no putting anything past Hillary’s Hero-President, or President Volleyball Adrift. (Also operating brain-impared while in office, like the current one. Not a metaphor, nor even age. Medical, several events, from quite a while ago, lest we forget.)
They do this all the time, like, say, unavoidable property taxes and general taxation, funding school systems. You can opt out if, like Matt Damon’s mom, you can afford to pay for yr kid’s education twice.
Love, love, love when Will Hunting, there, goes off about — paraphrasing, but he’s taken this position consistently, in public: “Every kid should have the kind of education I got. So, we need to fund public schools better; pay teachers better…” You didn’t get that education in public schools. How about we give everybody the option to get schooling somewhere better, like you had — including the people who can’t afford to pay for it twice.? Maybe they don’t have to pay for the one they don’t want for their kid — how about that?
Jackholes used this hack to coerce medical protocols, treatments, etc during the ‘rona spasm. And they use it all the time for policies on housing, banking n finance, information gathering and retrieval, what AGs and DAs investigate and prosecute or don’t, energy and “environmental” clap-trap.
— Always look for the other effects of whatever policy, protocol, or approach you put in place. They’re usually bigger than the thing you’re going for.
— Finally There are no “unintended consequences” only consequences you were too dumb to see, or too dishonest to admit.
Sorry for the rant. We need to smarten up or we’ll keep deserving the abuse we’ll keep getting. (BTW property seizures for the “greater good” includes to assemble a larger property for private development the powers that be have declared would be good, or something. So also said The Supremes. The mischeif under those two words “general welfare” is so far unbounded.)
Keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the excess carbon in the “burden” of evidence aborted, cannibalized, sequestered in darkness, in state-established ethical religious sanction A wicked solution.
Women, men, and “our Posterity” are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
Isn’t this the same state that compelled young women to get some sort of nasty shot to prevent a venereal disease?
Isn’t forcing pharmacies against their will involuntary servitude?
My point was this is the same state compelling things that are none of its business. I expect this sort of thing out of California or most of the New England states. Not Texas.
Isn’t the Federal or State Governments forcing people to get a “vaccine” for Covid?
No, Texas does not mandate Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination of either female or male youngsters. The state recommends vaccination of both before age 21. HPV is the most prevalent STD in the US. The shot isn’t nasty either.
Texas considered mandating the vaccination, but backed down due to public opposition. The state does have one of the highest incidences of HPV infection and cervical cancer in the nation (yes, there’s a definite link). We have a daughter-in-law undergoing gynecologic treatment of abnormal cervical cells resulting from HPV infection, the treatment is an effort to prevent development of cervical cancer.
I believe the vaccination is a good idea, but do not believe it should be mandated by the state.
Considering that the left is advocating “abortion” AFTER birth, we ought to consider just how late ‘abortion’ can take place. If so, cyanide pills will do the trick to the late term births of defects like AOC and her crew.
How did America come to a place where funding trumps civility and protection of human life?
We saw how the government stopped pharmacies from filling out prescription orders for Ivermectin.
America has become a Marxist society through the blessings of ballot votes.