[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana [official website] ruled [order, PDF] Sunday that Louisiana must continue to provide Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] clinics for 14 days. Judge John deGravelles’s ruling, which was made public [AP report] on Monday, came as a result of a recent order by Governor Bobby Jindal [official website] to block funding to the clinics. While Jindal began his efforts to defund the clinics after the release of controversial videos related to Planned Parenthood and abortion, lawyers for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast [advocacy website] have called the move politically motivated as Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast does not, in fact, perform abortions in Louisiana. Planned Parenthood challenged the right of the state to end the clinics’ funding for health services not related to abortion, such as cancer screenings.

Abortion related issues have been a heated topic of discussion for the past several years in the US. Earlier this month the US House of Representatives [official website] approved [JURIST report] the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, a bill that would cut all federal funding to women’s healthcare provider Planned Parenthood. In August Planned Parenthood filed a complaint [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, alleging that Alabama Governor Robert Bentley’s termination of Medicaid provider agreements for the facility violates a federal law that requires Medicaid beneficiaries to have a choice in provider for family planning. Also in August the Alaska Superior Court struck down [JURIST report] a state law it says would have unfairly burdened low-income individuals by limiting Medicaid funding for abortions. Earlier that month the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee lifted [JURIST report] a temporary restraining order that limited the state in enforcing new abortion laws regarding licensing standards for clinics. In July Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law [JURIST report] the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, limiting the ability of a woman to seek an abortion more than 20 weeks into her pregnancy. In June the US Supreme Court granted a motion to stay [JURIST report], allowing more than half of Texas’ 18 abortion clinics to stay open by temporarily blocking a law that would place stringent requirements on clinics requiring the majority of them to close.