By Elana Gordon
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-989406.mp3
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A stand-alone family planning clinic in Dodge City wants to join Planned Parenthood's lawsuit, challenging the way Kansas allocates family planning funds.
The federal funds subsidize things like birth control, pap smears, and STD tests to low income Kansans.
Effective this summer, state law now mandates that funds first go to health departments, hospitals, and federally qualified health centers.
Doug Bonney, legal director of the ACLU in Kansas, is representing the Dodge City clinic. He says the 35-year-old clinic has long depended on those funds - about $39,000 annually - to serve hundreds of low income residents in Ford County...and that the clinic can't continue without that support.
"They have two employees. They have gone on a volunteer basis since July 1, and haven't been paid since sometime in July," says Bonney. "And that obviously can't go on."
Bonney says the clinic will likely close in a few weeks without the resumed funding, leaving no other agency in the area offering discounted, federally-funded family planning services.
The new Kansas law directly affects three places in the state: the Dodge City clinic and a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wichita and in Hays.
Proponents of the new law say health agencies which don't support abortion services should be first in line to get family planning funds.
None of the affected clinics offer abortions.
Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the state when the law first took effect this summer. A judge has ordered the state to resume funding to Planned Parenthood while the case is in court.
In response that that ruling, Dr. Robert Moser, Secretary for Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said the federal funding was not intended as an entitlement program for Planned Parenthood.
"Other providers are already offering a fuller spectrum of health care for Kansas patients," Moser said. "This highly unusual ruling implies a private organization has a right to taxpayer subsidy."
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