Texans are now getting far fewer family planning services at a higher cost than ever, according to documents submitted to the Department of State Health Services council this week. Just 75,160 low-income clients received publicly-funded family planning services in fiscal year 2012, compared to 211,980 in fiscal year 2010. That was before conservative Texas lawmakers slashed money-saving family planning funds in their 2011 legislative session.

That means Texas is spending more money—about $37 per person—to serve fewer than half the clients it saw two years ago.

This is fiscal conservatism? This is good money management?

This is Texas.

As Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle reports, a new funding matrix barred specialty family planning providers—the matrix targeted Planned Parenthood, the most efficient provider of family planning in the state—from receiving Title X family planning money and privileged funding for Federally Qualified Health Centers, which are far less cost-effective than other providers.

But there’s hope: a coalition of reproductive health care providers in Texas is taking a new tactic when it comes to the state’s drastic family planning cuts and attempts to push Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program: they’re going to apply directly to the federal government for Title X (family planning) grant money. If they get the funds, they state health department and the Texas legislature will no longer get to play politics with women’s health. Reports the Texas Observer:

If the coalition wins the federal grant—called Title X (Title 10)—a slice of Texas’ family planning money would no longer go to the state health department—and would no longer be subject to the whims of the Legislature. Instead, the coalition, organized by Fran Hagerty of the Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas, would distribute the money to family planning providers statewide, including perhaps Planned Parenthood, and restore services to tens of thousands of Texans.

Coalition leader Hagerty told the Observershe wants as many health care providers as possible to sign on to the grant proposal to ensure their funding if they’re successful. Planned Parenthood hasn’t publicly said it’s part of the coalition, but it has been a major target of state lawmakers and bureaucrats who’ve been working to ban it from participating in the WHP.

If the state continues to mismanage its family planning funds–what little it has to work with, thanks to Republican lawmakers–and see such a steep decline in services provided to the low-income Texans that need them the most, Texas can likely look forward to more Medicaid-funded births and higher costs overall for taxpayers.

If Texas conservatives want to save money and reduce abortions that result from unwanted pregnancies, the numbers show that they’re doing everything wrong.