This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Once again, the state of Utah is being dragged into federal court to force it to behave properly. It's hard to tell what's worse: the cost to Utah taxpayers, or the embarrassment to its citizens.
This time, the case involves the hair-trigger — and politically cowardly — decision by Gov. Gary Herbert to cancel $275,000 worth of contracts by which Planned Parenthood of Utah has received federal money funneled through the Utah Department of Health.
Those dollars paid for services that, in a mature world, would not be the least bit controversial. They include education programs and tracking sexually transmitted diseases.
But because Planned Parenthood also provides abortion services — with money donated from individuals and foundations — it is eternally a political lightning rod.
A few months ago, an anti-choice group released a series of videos that purported to catch executives of Planned Parenthood chapters in other states discussing how they might profit by selling fetal tissue derived from abortions.
Providing such tissue for research is not only legal in the United States, it has been a gold mine of medical progress for decades. Those who provide the tissue are not supposed to profit from it, but may accept reimbursement for costs.
State officials in Indiana, Massachusetts and Washington looked into whether Planned Parenthood was in violation of any law or agreement. In each case, the organization was cleared of any wrongdoing. A congressional investigation, which included some particularly embarrassing histrionics from Utah's Rep. Jason Chaffetz, also came up dry.
Officials in Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana moved to cancel contracts, but have since been told by federal courts that those actions were illegal.
The courts should come to the same conclusion in Utah's case. Herbert's actions were without merit. They were based on unreliable hearsay, if not downright falsehoods. Herbert did not even seek the kind of investigation that was carried out in other states before acting.
Nobody has suggested that the Utah chapter did anything wrong. Herbert's glib assumption that other providers can easily pick up the slack is doubted by his own health experts.
A move to block the cancelation was rejected at the U.S. District Court level, on the grounds that Utah has much latitude to renew or cancel such contracts, and has now been appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The best outcome would be for the appeals court to rule in favor of Planned Parenthood, for Herbert to say he tried and for everything to go back to the way it was before the governor was duped by right-wing propaganda.