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 The legal move filed in circuit court in Tallahassee came after
Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott ordered a probe last month of
the state's 16 Planned Parenthood locations, resulting in three
clinics being cited on Aug. 5 for illegally performing abortions in
the second trimester.
Planned Parenthood said the abortions in question were
first-trimester abortions and that the state appeared to have
arbitrarily shortened its measurement of the first trimester.
Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers have called for
Planned Parenthood to be investigated and its federal funding
eliminated after the appearance of videos that critics said showed
the reproductive healthcare group involved in the illegal sale of
aborted fetal tissue.
Planned Parenthood, which provides healthcare services to millions
of women at hundreds of centers nationwide, has denied any
wrongdoing.
Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration said its inspection
found no fetal organs being sold.
A spokeswoman for AHCA said Planned Parenthood had "self-reported"
the unauthorized abortions. "The Agency looks forward to litigating
this matter," she added.
The vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dawn
Laguens, said in a statement on Monday the allegation that it
performed unlicensed procedures "is completely false."
The group accused the state of moving the goalpost by using
different standards from ones AHCA had used over the past decade to
calculate first- and second-trimester abortions.
Planned Parenthood said AHCA had long agreed to define the first
trimester of a pregnancy as the first 12 weeks of pregnancy or the
first 14 weeks following the last normal menstrual period.
The group noted that AHCA's new definition was made without any
prior announcement and noted the political timing of the citations
that were issued two days before the Republican presidential debate.
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"We have been doing things the same way for 10 years without
incident. We really are surprised by this," said Barbara Zdravecky,
chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and
Central Florida.
U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who chairs
the Judiciary Committee and U.S. Representative Trent Franks, an
Arizona Republican who chairs the Constitution and Civil Justice
Subcommittee, called on the Department of Justice on Monday to
provide further information into potential violations of the
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act by Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood focuses on family planning and pregnancy
prevention, with abortions comprising 3 percent of its services,
according to its website.
(Additional reporting by Bill Cotterell in Tallahassee, Fla. and
Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler and Peter
Cooney)
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