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Emails show the Governor’s office changed a press release involving investigations into Planned Parenthood, and as Matt Galka tells us, the healthcare group says the changes show the Governor was only trying to play political games.

Viral videos from another state sparked outrage over Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal remains practices.  The videos caused Governor Rick Scott to call for an investigation into clinics in Florida.

The investigations found the 16 facilities didn’t participate in fetal remains deals.  An early August press release originally obtained by Politico Florida intended to make that clear.  The line “However, there is no evidence of the mishandling of fetal remains at any of the 16 clinics we investigated across the state,” appeared in the version the Agency for Healthcare Administration wrote.  But once it went through the Governor’s office, the line disappeared.

Planned Parenthood spokesman Damien Filer said this confirms what the healthcare provider has been saying all along.

“From the beginning, our take on this has been the motivations were political, because we couldn’t understand what else they would be,” he said.

When asked if his office was trying to make Planned Parenthood look bad, the Governor was non-committal.

“The agency, our state Agency for Healthcare Administration, they’re responsibility is to make sure everyone who does healthcare in our state does it right, so what I asked them to do is just go look at it, make sure Planned Parenthood and their facilities are compliant with the law, and that’s what they’re doing,” said Gov. Scott.

The investigation originally found three clinics to be performing abortions outside their licensed time frame to do so, a claim Planned Parenthood disputed. The violations were eventually dropped.

We reached out to the Governor’s communications team asking why exactly the line saying there was no evidence of fetal remains violations was taken out. Communications Director Jackie Schutz responded “our office often works with our agencies on materials,” and that the document was a working draft.