HOUSTON (AP) – Texas investigators say that an anti-abortion group must repay the state more than $1.5 million in overpayments and prohibited costs after coming under fire for neglecting to provide services to thousands of low-income women.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the office of the health inspector general announced Thursday that it had uncovered “serious contractual violations” by the Heidi Group, an evangelical nonprofit that started promoting alternatives to abortion in the 1990s.
The state hired the organization in 2016 to help strengthen small clinics that specialize in women’s health but don’t offer abortions after Republican lawmakers cut funding to Planned Parenthood. But an Associated Press investigation found that the group came nowhere close to serving 50,000 women, as it had promised.
Last year, Texas canceled millions of dollars in troubled contracts with the organization.
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