A Texas Anti-Abortion Group Dramatically Missed its Family Planning Targets. Now its Founder is

[TexasTowelie]

A Texas Anti-Abortion Group Dramatically Missed its Family Planning Targets. Now its Founder is Suing the Federal Government for More Money.


Anti-abortion activist Carol Everett—whose organization the Heidi Group served a fraction of the women’s health patients it pledged to treat and is under state investigation for questionable spending of more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars—has a new venture. She’s quietly starting a new anti-abortion group and suing the federal government to try to get more funding.

In a move first reported by Politico, Everett and two others affiliated with the Heidi Group formed a new organization, Vita Nuova, or “new life,” on July 2. The very next day, the group filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, challenging rules that it says bars Vita Nuova, a “Christian, pro-life organization,” and others like it from participating in the Title X federal family planning program. The lawsuit claims that Vita Nuova—which does not appear to have a website or medical providers at this point—is stymied by its anti-abortion position, and by a Title X requirement that providers recognize same-sex marriage, which the group does not, opposing “homosexual behavior for religious reasons.” Rules that prevent the organization from qualifying for Title X funding “hinder Vita Nuova’s efforts to raise funds and build a network of providers,” according to the complaint. The group is “preparing to apply for Title X grants at the next available opportunity.”

The lawsuit comes as providers across the country are grappling with how or whether to comply with new Trump rules that ban Title X recipients from referring patients for abortions, lifting up religious, anti-abortion providers over established family planning providers like Planned Parenthood. Texas, which slashed family planning funding in 2011 and kicked abortion providers out of its state women’s health program in 2013, was a test case for this national effort. Despite its lack of experience with family planning programs, the Heidi Group was given multimillion-dollar state contracts in 2016 to fill in the gap left by shuttered or excluded women’s health providers, subcontracting with crisis pregnancy centers, doctors, and clinics across the state, and promising to serve more patients in its first year than Planned Parenthood had.

The experiment failed.

New data obtained by the Observer from the state health agency shows that for a second year the Heidi Group served a fraction of the patients it promised it would in both state women’s health programs, while still spending most of the funds it received. In the Healthy Texas Women program in fiscal year 2018, the Heidi Group spent 95 percent of its nearly $1.2 million contract, plus about $878,000 in fee-for-service expenditures, and served just 13 percent of the more than 35,400 patients promised, according to state data. In the Family Planning Program, the group spent 67 percent of its more than $2 million award, and served 36 percent of the approximately 7,100 patients anticipated, the state health commission reported. The year before, the group had served less than 5 percent of the 69,000 patients it pledged to cover in both programs, according to the state. In a June Observer investigation, interviews and documents indicate a pattern of mismanagement, contract violations, and misuse of state funds at the Heidi Group.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/a-texas-anti-abortion-group-dramatically-missed-its-family-planning-targets-now-its-founder-is-suing-the-federal-government-for-more-money/

[Progressive Jones]

1. Grifting in the name of "Gawd". nt

[Beartracks]

2. Their business plan sounds like... well, not healthcare.

Sounds like their whole reason to exist may be to raise a stink about their own victim status so they can proselytize on the taxpayer dime.

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[RainCaster]

3. This is a fraud

Yes, the Bible thumpin' Jesus lovin' baby savin' GOP has created a new way to proselytize for prophet.

Sp intentional

[Freddie]

4. Isn't this the group

That is taking federal “family planning” funds while not actually offering contraception, just info about “natural family planning”? Talk about a fraud.