An official for Planned Parenthood Southeast is questioning the state of Georgia's motives for cutting off free kits it was providing the organization that screen for sexually transmitted diseases.
Planned Parenthood said this week that funding for the kits, which test for chlamydia and gonnorhea, ended last Friday.
A Georgia public health official said the money for the kits had simply dried up.
Gov. Nathan Deal ordered a state investigation of Planned Parenthood Southeast after a nationwide furor erupted over Planned Parenthood's practice, in some states, of harvesting and donating fetal body parts after abortions. Planned Parenthood in Georgia does not donate or sell fetal tissues but disposes of them according to state law; that is, it employs a contractor to incinerate them, the organization says.
The organization received news of the cutback on the screening kits one day after the governor announced, in July, that he wanted the state Departments of Public Health and Community Health to investigate Planned Parenthood.
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