Victory!

Kinda, anyway. The battle is not over and yes, it could prove to be a temporary victory. But for now, it's still a victory.

A federal judge has blocked implementation of a new Indiana law stripping all Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood because a small part of the agency's work involves abortions. The temporary injunction issued by District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt

"means that Planned Parenthood of Indiana can once again be reimbursed for the preventive health care it provides its 9,300 Medicaid patients," Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) said in a statement.

Kansas and North Carolina have also banned funding for Planned Parenthood but they cut only state funding and not federal Medicaid funds as well, as Indiana did.

Pratt also barred a provision in the law that requires health care providers to lie and tell a pregnant woman that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks. However, she allowed another section that requires telling a woman that human physical life begins at conception - another lie - to go ahead.

And yes, those are lies. The brain of the fetus does not develop until rather late in pregnancy. The idea that "pain" can be felt in the absence of a brain is utterly ridiculous. As for the "human physical life begins at conception" crap, even by the most generous understanding, the notion that a fetus can be referred to as "human" before it is capable of surviving outside the womb is worse than absurd, it is a fantasy hatched by people who want to insist that a woman's body is not her own but merely a vessel for the next generation.

Still, while it's not a complete victory and may even prove in time to be a temporary one, these days you take what you can get. I recall Cesar Chavez saying that the farmworkers lost so many battles that they had to celebrate their defeats. So I guess a near-total (but maybe temporary) victory should be enough to take pleasure in.