Planned Parenthood Arizona filed a lawsuit on Monday against a newly signed law that would prevent Medicaid patients in the state from choosing Planned Parenthood as their health provider because some of its clinics offer abortions.

The Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priority Act (HB 2800), signed by Gov. Jan Brewer (R) May 5, bans Planned Parenthood from seeking reimbursements for its low-income patients through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood's legal team is arguing that the bill violates federal Medicaid rules, which say that states cannot limit a Medicaid patient's ability to choose a family planning provider based on the scope of the other services that provider offers.

"It is wrong for the state to tell any Arizonan who they can and cannot see for their health care," Bryan Howard, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, told reporters in a conference call on Tuesday.

Anti-abortion activist group Susan B. Anthony List, which helped write and promote the legislation, said its purpose is to prevent taxpayer money from flowing to an organization that provides abortions.

“Arizona taxpayers have spoken through their elected representatives -- they do not want their tax dollars going to abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood, which performs more than 330,000 abortions a year,” said SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser.

Of the 15 Planned Parenthood clinics in Arizona, only five offer abortions, and a patient cannot use state Medicaid money to pay for an abortion unless her life is in danger. The only services at Planned Parenthood that the state subsidizes for low-income patients are family planning and preventative health services, such as birth control, STD testing and breast cancer screenings.

In 2011, Planned Parenthood served nearly 3,000 patients through AHCCCS and were reimbursed a total of $350,000. Under the new law, low-income patients would have to find an AHCCCS provider other than Planned Parenthood to use, which could be difficult for women who live in many of the state's more rural areas.

Howard said he was confident Planned Parenthood would win its lawsuit against the state because federal judges in Texas, Indiana, North Carolina, Kansas and Tennessee have already blocked similar defunding laws in the past year.

"We have been here for Arizonans for 78 years, and will continue to be here for women and families and their health care needs," he said.

Earlier on HuffPost:

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  • 99 Problems (JAY-Z)

    Eric Fehrnstrom, senior campaign adviser for Mitt Romney, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/06/03/494238/fehrnstrom-shiny-objects-women/" target="_hplink">said on Sunday</a> that issues pertaining to women's reproductive rights, such as abortion and birth control, were "shiny objects" meant to distract voters from the real issues. "Mitt Romney is pro-life," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "He'll govern as a pro-life president, but you're going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people's attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election."

  • Talk (Coldplay)

    The Senate will vote Thursday on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would expand and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and make it illegal for employers to punish women for bringing up pay disparity issues. Dana Perino, a Fox News contributor and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/30/perino-equal-pay-issue-is-a-distraction-for-just-48-hours/" target="_hplink">called the equal pay issue</a> "a distraction" from the country's real financial problems last week. "Well, it's just yet another distraction of dealing with the major financial issues that the country should be dealing with," Perino said. "This is not a job creator."

  • Just My Imagination (The Temptations)

    Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose home state's legislature recently defunded Planned Parenthood and voted to pass a bill that would allow employers to deny women birth control coverage, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/26/john-mccain-war-on-women_n_1455591.html" target="_hplink">delivered a floor speech</a> in which he insisted that the war on women is something imaginary for Democrats to "sputter about." "My friends, this supposed 'War on Women' or the use of similarly outlandish rhetoric by partisan operatives has two purposes, and both are purely political in their purpose and effect: The first is to distract citizens from real issues that really matter and the second is to give talking heads something to sputter about when they appear on cable television," he said.

  • Butterfly Fly Away (Miley & Billy Ray Cyrus)

    Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried to trivialize concerns about the legislative "war on women" by comparing it to a "war on caterpillars." "If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we'd have problems with caterpillars," Priebus <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-05/priebus-says-gender-battle-as-fictonal-as-caterpillar-war.html" target="_hplink">said in an April interview</a> on Bloomberg Television. "It's a fiction."

  • Distraction (Angels And Airwaves)

    Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Sarah Steelman (R) took heat from her opponents in May when she contended that Democratic lawmakers' focus on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act was "a distraction" from the issues they should be dealing with instead. "I think it's unfortunate that the Democrats have made a political football out of this thing, which I think is what they keep doing to distract from real problems that are facing our nation," she said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio.

  • We Don't Care (Kanye West)

    South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) defended the Republican Party in April for going after insurance coverage for contraception by arguing that women don't actually care about contraception. "Women don't care about contraception," she said on ABC's The View. "They care about jobs and the economy and raising their families and all those other things."