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TUESDAY,MAY1,2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
POLITICS
Judge blocks funds to Texas Planned Parenthood
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AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting funds through the state's Women's Health Program — a decision the state immediately appealed.
U. S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin ruled there is sufficient evidence that a law banning Planned Parenthood from the program is unconstitutional. He imposed an injunction against enforcing it until he can hear full arguments. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed Yeakel's decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that it remove the injunction.
Mary Green, Peg Armstrong and Jan Perrault hold up signs during Women's Health Express, a bus event held in San Antonio, Texas on March 6, 2012, to protest the attempt to cut Planned Parenthood out of the state's Women's Health Plan. Federal Judge Lee Yeakel ruled Monday there is sufficient evidence a law banning Planned Parenthood from participating in the Texas' Women's Health Program in unconstitutional and stopped the state from banning the organization from receiving state funds.
The law passed last year by the Republican-controlled Legislature forbids state agencies from providing funds to an organization affiliated with abortion providers. Texas law already required that groups receiving federal or state funding be legally and financially separate from clinics that perform abortions.
state health programs The judge accepted Planned Parenthood's argument that banning the organization from the program would leave women without access to clinics for basic health services and check-ups.
Eight Planned Parenthood clinics that do not provide abortions sued over the new law. The clinics say it unconstitutionally restricts their freedom of speech and association to qualify to take part in state health programs.
"The court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women." Yeakel wrote in his ruling. "The record before the court at this juncture reflects uncertainty as to the continued
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viability of the Texas Women's Health Program."
Texas officials have said that if the state is forced to include Planned Parenthood, they will likely shut down the program that serves basic health care and contraception to 130,000 poor women. Yeakel acknowledged that was a risk.
"It's a tremendous relief that someone is looking out for women," Gonzalez said Monday, referring to the judge's decision. "It makes me upset that these are men, for the most part, who are making decisions affecting our reproductive health and that they would try to shame us."
"The court observes that if the federal funds are phased out, Texas does not provide another source of funds, and the Women's Health Program terminates, the controversy now before the court may be of no consequence," he wrote.
The Women's Health Program was established to provide care for poor women who would not otherwise qualify for Medicaid. It supplies cancer screenings, annual exams, and access to birth control.
Xelena Gonzalez of San Antonio said she received abnormal test results and needed a follow-up appointment just before the state law took effect in March, and her area Planned Parenthood clinic lost funding. She said she couldn't afford the lab fees and other costs of going to another provider. She said she is thrilled she can return to Planned Parenthood to follow up.
"Texas has a long history of protecting life, and we are confident in Attorney General Abbott's appeal to defend the will of Texans and our state law, which prohibits taxpayer funds from supporting abortion providers and affiliates in the Women's Health Program," Frazier said.
Catherine Frazier, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the state will pursue all legal options to keep the law.
Patricio Gonzales, CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County, called on the Republican governor to stop trying to shut down Planned Parenthood in Texas.
"No woman should ever have to fear being cut off from her doctor's
care because of shortsighted political games," Gonzales said.
The court's decision comes after the federal government cut off funding to Texas because of the state regulation excluding affiliates of abortion providers. Federal officials said the rule violates federal law by restricting women from choosing the qualified medical provider of their choice.
Perry promised to make up for
the lost federal funds. State health officials say maintaining the program was cheaper than allowing it to expire, because ending the program would result in a spike in unplanned pregnancies among poor women who rely on Medicaid, which is also funded by the state.
before conducting an abortion. That injunction was overturned by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit and the law allowed to stand.
Planned Parenthood won a similar injunction earlier this year against the state's new requirement that doctors perform a sonogram
No matter what the appeal court decides, Yeakel's decision is temporary. A final decision will come after he presides over a full trial. Whatever decision he reaches will likely be appealed.
MILITARY
Expansion of Air Force training area won't damage environment
DENVER — The Air Force says the proposed expansion of a flight training area in eastern Colorado and western Kansas would have no significant environmental impacts.
A draft environmental assessment was released Monday. A 30-day period for public comment on starts Tuesday.
The current training area is about 2,500 square miles. It includes Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Kit Carson counties in Colorado and Greeley, Logan, Scott, Wallace and Wichita counties in Kansas.
The size of the proposed expansion wasn't immediately available. The draft environmental statement lists requirements from about 3,900 to 5,600 square miles for different types of training.
The training area is used by F-16s from the Colorado Air National Guard at Buckley Air Force Base and by refueling tankers from the Kansas Air National Guard at Forbes Field in Topeka.
Associated Press
HEALTH
Alarming increase in babies born addicted to painkillers
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CHICAGO — Less than a month, Savannah Dannellee screnches her tiny face into a scowl as a nurse gently squirts a dose of methadone into her mouth.
The infant is going through drug withdrawal and is being treated with the same narcotic prescribed for her mother to fight addiction to powerful prescription painkillers.
Disturbing new research says the number of U.S. babies born with signs of opiate drug withdrawal has tripled in a decade because of a surge in pregnant women's use of legal and illegal narcotics, including Vicodin, OxyContin and heroin, researchers say. It is the first national study of the problem.
The number of newborns with withdrawal symptoms increased from a little more than one per 1,000 babies sent home from the hospital in 2000 to more than three per 1,000 in 2009, the study found. More than 13,000 U.S. infants were affected in 2009, the researchers estimated.
The newborns include babies like Savannah, whose mother stopped
abusing painkillers and switched to prescription methadone early in pregnancy, and those whose mothers are still abusing legal or illegal drugs.
Weaning infants from these drugs can take weeks or months and often requires a lengthy stay in intensive care units. Hospital charges for treating these newborns soared from $190 million to $720 million between 2000 and 2009, the study found.
The study was released online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Savannah is hooked up to heart and oxygen monitors in an Oak Lawn, Ill., newborn intensive care unit. In a pink crib, she sleeps fitfully, sometimes cries all night, and has had diarrhea and trouble feeding — typical signs of withdrawal. Some affected babies also have breathing problems, low birth weights and seizures.
"It's really hard, every day, emotionally and physically," said Aileen Dannelley, 25. "It's really hard when your daughter is born addicted."
Doctors say newborns aren't really addicted, but their bodies are
ependent on methadone or other opiates because of their mothers' use during pregnancy. Small methadone doses to wean them off these drugs is safer than cutting them off altogether, which can cause dangerous seizures and even death, said Dr. Mark Brown, chief of pediatrics at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
Newborn drug withdrawal is rampant in Maine, Florida, West Virginia, parts of the Midwest and other sections of the country.
Dr. Stephen Patrick, the lead author of the study and a newborn specialist at the University of Michigan health system in Ann Arbor, called the problem a "public health epidemic" that demands attention from policymakers, as well as from researchers to clarify what long-term problems these infants may face.
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University of Maine scientist Marie Hayes said her research suggests some affected infants suffer developmental delays in early childhood, but whether those problems persist is uncertain.
It's the 21st century version of what was known as the "crack baby"
Aileen Dannelley holds her baby, Savannah, at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill. The one-month-old baby is being treated with methadone for withdrawal while she and her mother both fight addiction to powerful prescription pillskiller
epidemic of the 1980s. Some experts say that epidemic was overblown and that infants born to mothers using crack cocaine face no serious long-term health problems.
Some think the current problem is being overblown, too. Carl Hart, an assistant psychiatry professor at Columbia University and a substance abuse researcher at the New York Psychiatric Institute, noted that only a tiny portion of the estimated four million U.S. infants born each year are affected.
Hart also said the study probably includes women who weren't abusing drugs during pregnancy, but were taking prescribed painkillers for legitimate reasons. He said
Doctors pushing powerful painkillers "like candy" contribute to the problem, said Arturo Valdez, who runs the Chicago substance abuse program that Aileen Dannellee attends. Patients at his West Side clinic include men and women who are prescribed opiate painkillers for legitimate reasons, such as car accident injuries, and find them-
fight their addiction.
AILEEN DANNELEY Mother to a baby born with addiction
he worries that the study will unfairly stigmatize pregnant women who are "doing the right thing" by taking methadone to
selves addicted when the prescriptions runs out. Some turn to street drugs, which can be cheaper and easier to obtain. Valdez said.
In some states, mothers of newborns with drug withdrawal are arrested and jailed, but Valdez said addiction is a brain disease that should be treated like other illnesses, not stigmatized.
Aileen Dannelley said she
started abusing drugs after an adult neighbor introduced her to crack when she was 14. She said she would "never have touched it" if she had known how addictive drugs can be.
She said she has abused Vicodin, which a doctor gave her to treat back pain from sitting all day at an office job, as well as other prescription painkillers and heroin.
Dannelle was still abusing drugs early in her pregnancy but decided in December to quit, vowing: "I'm not going to go back to that lifestyle. There's a baby inside me."
Now she is trying to get her life back on track. Estranged from her husband, she is living with her parents and just signed up for nursing classes at a local junior college. She visits Savannah every day. The baby has been in the hospital since she was born in early April, and her mother hopes to take her home soon.
"I am doing so good for the first time in my life." Dannelle said.