Texas doubled funding for an anti-abortion program. Now lawmakers want to award the money without

[TexasTowelie]

Texas doubled funding for an anti-abortion program. Now lawmakers want to award the money without competitive bidding.

by Edgar Walters, Texas Tribune


Texas’ fast-expanding, controversial Alternatives to Abortion program, which pays private counselors to discourage women from terminating their pregnancies, is on track to more than double its funding with a $41 million infusion — and one anti-abortion nonprofit is primed to win big on the state’s largesse.

Eighty Republican state lawmakers took the unusual step last month of writing a letter to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the anti-abortion program, directing administrators to expand funding to a particular provider. The Texas Pregnancy Care Network has done such a good job connecting expectant and adoptive parents with counseling and other services, the lawmakers wrote, that the health commission should increase payments to the provider without considering offers from other potential contractors.

The intent of the Texas Legislature, they wrote, is to “continue to support the current program contractors.”

“The Legislature would not have made the increase in appropriations had we not believed the Program was already extremely successful,” reads the letter, which The Texas Tribune obtained under open records law.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/23/texas-anti-abortion-contract-may-be-awarded-without-competitive-bid/

[dhol82]

1. Wonder who's getting he kickback?