It’s amazing how flippant some state lawmakers are about the state’s legal bills, considering them just a cost of doing business. No, they are a cost of making bad laws. The Kansas Attorney General’s Office estimated last week that it will need an additional $1.2 million to defend likely challenges to the state’s new gun, abortion and drug-testing laws. It’s already spent more than $750,000 defending previous abortion laws (and cases are still in the courts). The Attorney General’s Office even told lawmakers earlier in the session that parts of the new gun law couldn’t be enforced and would spur costly lawsuits, but lawmakers passed the bill anyway. It’s as if they are spending other people’s money. No, wait – they are.
An Associated Press photo showing “JESUS + Mary” written at the top of Gov. Sam Brownback’s notes about the abortion bill he signed Friday has received some national media notice. The sweeping bill blocks tax deductions for abortion providers and those who receive abortions, requires abortion clinics to provide information about how abortion may cause an increase in breast cancer, and declares that life begins “at fertilization.” The typewritten portion of Brownback’s notes stated that the bill would create “a culture of life” in Kansas.
A New York Times editorial Sunday headlined “Courage in Kansas” recounted some of the obstacles and threats that Julie Burkhart has faced in opening the South Wind Women’s Center, a women’s health care and abortion clinic in Wichita. These include a chilling jailhouse conversation that an anti-abortion group recorded with Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Burkhart’s former boss, Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller. Roeder said that Burkhart had put a target on her back. The editorial concluded: “Dangerous and unconstitutional legislative restrictions, unceasing harassment, threats of violence and fearful doctors having to hide their identities for self-protection: This is what it means to be on the front line of trying to deliver legal and necessary reproductive health care to women in Wichita.” Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups are criticizing the media for not giving more coverage to the case of a Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of delivering live babies and then killing them.
Expect more costly legal challenges when the anti-abortion bill that the Kansas Senate approved this week becomes law. The bill’s legal problems include the elimination of a woman’s mental health as justification for mid- to late-term abortions and the requirement that doctors distribute information about a connection between abortions and breast cancer – a link not supported by science. The bill’s prohibition on deducting any abortion-related expense on state income taxes also raises privacy concerns. But none of this seems to matter to most lawmakers, who even resented having to consider whether the bill’s declaration that life begins at fertilization could ban certain forms of birth control.
As a retired physician, Rep. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills, should be a valued resource for her House colleagues when they consider health-related legislation. But as the House gave initial approval to the latest big anti-abortion bill Tuesday, it ignored her efforts to excise medically inaccurate language linking breast cancer to abortion. She made another excellent point: Legislation dealing with health issues should go through the chamber’s health committee.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission made the right decision Thursday in denying a request by Kansans for Life to change zoning to prevent South Wind Women’s Center from opening in the building that previously housed George Tiller’s abortion clinic (in photo). The property reportedly has been zoned for medical purposes since 1937, and that’s how it was advertised when South Wind purchased it. Though many citizens oppose abortion, it is a legal procedure. And it struck many other citizens as ironic and insincere for anti-abortion groups to argue that the zoning should be changed to protect the neighborhood from disturbances created by those same groups.
Seventy percent of Americans want the Roe v. Wade ruling upholding abortion rights to stay, while 24 percent would like it overturned, according to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that came out on the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. So why is abortion still such a significant issue in politics? One reason is that 74 percent of those who support overturning Roe consider abortion a “crucial issue” or “one of many crucial issues,” according to a Pew poll, while only 31 percent of Roe supporters consider abortion a crucial issue.
“Congratulations Paul. Well done. You were respectful & truthful, unlike your opponent who was cranky & rude. Time for leaders w/character.” – Rep. Mike Pompeo (in photo), R-Wichita, on his Pompeo for Congress Twitter account, complimenting Rep. Paul Ryan’s debate performance
“The backwater word is: ‘Do not send too much to make him look like a nut.’” – Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, on how aggressive Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration wants to be in passing anti-abortion legislation next session
“My position is really more apolitical, just trying to be a good insurance regulator. His is more of a political position, and I understand that.” – Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, on Brownback’s unwillingness to have anything to do with the federal health reform law
“When you don’t agree with the facts, then you just label it scare tactics.” – Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, on Republicans’ reaction when Democrats mention the revenue shortfalls forecast because of the governor’s tax cuts
“They do a good job but not that good.” – Rep. Tom Arpke, R-Salina, a Kansas Senate candidate, calling the legislative researchers’ predicted red ink “a red herring”
After being strongly pro-choice when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, then saying he was pro-life during the GOP presidential primary, Mitt Romney said this week that “there’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” But later that day a Romney spokeswoman issued a statement saying that “Gov. Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.” Romney’s campaign also contacted pro-life leaders to assure them that he really is anti-abortion.
The always sharp-tongued Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, recently made national news with comments at the 2012 Values Voter Summit equating abortion and slavery, and claiming that Planned Parenthood “was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine – a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction.” That prompted the Louisville Courier-Journal to call out Huelskamp (who has adopted four children of different ethnicities) in an editorial criticizing political language that strains “good taste as well as meaning.” The editorial argued: “Surely, Rep. Huelskamp, there are better ways of making an anti-abortion argument than calling millions of people racist baby killers.”
Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline blamed the dismissal of the case he filed against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri on a conspiracy to protect abortion providers, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Kline said the web of “corruption and cover-up” included Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor, Attorney General Derek Schmidt, and former Attorneys General Steve Six and Paul Morrison – multiple officials from multiple jurisdictions and political parties over multiple years. Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood, offered an alternative explanation for why the case fell apart: Kline’s “incompetent prosecution” and “abuse of political power.”
Republican lawmakers and officials are trying to distance themselves from Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who said that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” But more than 200 U.S. House members, including Akin and vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (in photo), R-Wis., sponsored a bill last year that would have rewritten the rape exception in federal abortion-funding bans to cover only “forcible rape.” That sounds like “legitimate rape.” Under public pressure, the bill was rewritten to drop the “forcible” language, but another provision was added saying the government couldn’t “subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape.” The bill passed the House, with all Republicans voting for it, but didn’t clear the Senate.
Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., is doing his best to blow his race against Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. On Sunday Akin defended his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape by stating that pregnancy from rape is really rare. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” he said – a claim not supported by science. McCaskill was quick to respond: “It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape.” Akin later claimed he “misspoke.” In the past few days, Akin also has said he wants to re-litigate civil rights law and compared federal student loans to stage 3 cancer.
UPDATE: Several top Republicans are calling on Akin to drop out of his race against McCaskill so that the party can nominate someone else. So far he is refusing.
Neither Associated Press nor MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow are backing down over a recent AP story on the role abortion was playing in the Sedgwick County district attorney’s race. AP quoted Operation Rescue president Troy Newman claiming that if District Attorney Nola Foulston “had done her job,” Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller “would still be alive today.” Newman contends that Foulston’s failure to prosecute Tiller is what led anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder to murder him. Maddow thinks it was irresponsible for AP to include Newman’s claims and to not mention Roeder’s links to Operation Rescue. “He didn’t get prosecuted so, obviously, he had to be shot, so says Operation Rescue, and so writes down the Associated Press, thus resulting in newspapers all over the country printing this absolutely wack-a-doo, uncontested, more than insinuation,” Maddow complained. She called on AP to retract the article, which AP refused to do. “We were quoting someone who was playing an active role in the outcome of an election,” Paul Colford, the AP’s director of media relations, told MSNBC. “We stand by the story.”
David Kensinger, Gov. Sam Brownback’s former chief of staff, is helping finance the Kansans for Life political action committee, the Kansas City Star reported. His consulting firm gave $15,000 to the PAC on July 31 – the PAC’s largest donation this year. So is it just a coincidence that the PAC endorsed most of the candidates backed by the Governor’s Office and anti-tax groups? KFL has said there was no connection, even though several of the incumbents targeted for defeat by the Governor’s Office and not endorsed by KFL – such as Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick – have lengthy pro-life voting and advocacy records.
Some legislators are upset with Kansans for Life for picking sides in GOP primaries in which both candidates are pro-life, Associated Press reported. For example, the anti-abortion group endorsed Rep. Richard Carlson, R-St. Marys, in a GOP primary against Rep. Trent LeDoux, R-Holton, who is also strongly anti-abortion. “Either endorse them both, or stay out of it,” LeDoux said. “Kansans for Life has marginalized themselves.” Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, said he has a 100 percent pro-life voting record, yet Kansans for Life endorsed his challenger, Rep. Larry Powell, R-Garden City. Morris suggested that Kansans for Life might be influenced by anti-tax groups that are targeting him and other state senators – a claim that Kansans for Life denies. One of the group’s litmus tests was whether senators supported changing the way judges are appointed, which is a procedural question on which reasonable people can disagree. In area Senate races, Kansans for Life didn’t endorse Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, or Rep. Dan Kerschen, R-Garden Plain, though it acknowledged that both have pro-life voting records.
The state asked a federal judge last week to toss out a lawsuit challenging a Kansas law passed last year that prohibits insurance companies from offering coverage of abortion in their general insurance plans. The state’s attorneys argued that the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri has failed to present evidence that individual women haven’t been able to obtain abortions because of the law, Associated Press reported. The ACLU argues that the law penalizes women who exercise their constitutional right to have an abortion. It’s unclear whether the law is unconstitutional; U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson will make that decision. But the law certainly isn’t conservative, as it bans private insurance companies from offering coverage of a legal service to private companies for their private employees. That’s not limited government.
Like pretty much every attorney general before him, Derek Schmidt has been criticized for the cost of hiring outside counsel to represent the state, including in the school-finance trial and the challenges to four new abortion laws. But “we get sued a lot,” he recently told The Eagle editorial board, and his comparatively small team of 40 to 45 in-house attorneys will always need to rely on outside counsel as a safety net. The office has spent more money on outside attorneys than he’d like to spend, but it’s saved some, too, on attorneys’ fees and otherwise. Schmidt said he expects to add civil litigators and pull in some cases now being farmed out. He defended the decision to hire outside lawyers to represent the state against the significant legal challenges to the abortion laws. “They deserve a good defense,” he said.
God has been wrongly portrayed by a local anti-abortion activist and a Kansas pastor in recent days. Angel Dillard, who is being sued by the U.S. Justice Department for a threatening letter she sent to a Wichita doctor, claimed in a court filing that her message was “divinely inspired.” Meanwhile, incredibly, the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca in north-central Kansas said that it’s time for the U.S. government to begin killing gay men and lesbians, the Huffington Post reported. “They should be put to death,” Curtis Knapp told his congregation. “‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ – I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.”
The number of self-identified “pro-choice” Americans has hit an all-time low – 41 percent – according to a new Gallup poll. That’s an 8 percentage point drop from the 2011 survey. However, Americans’ support for abortion rights increased slightly. Of those surveyed, 52 percent believe abortion should be legal under “certain circumstances,” up from 50 percent in 2011. An additional 25 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal under all circumstances, while 20 percent think it should be illegal. Meanwhile, 50 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as “pro-life,” up from 45 percent in 2011.
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office paid outside attorneys almost $628,000 through April to defend anti-abortion laws enacted last year, Associated Press reported. And that’s just the beginning. Laws passed last year are still tied up in the courts. And the Kansas House is determined to pass even more constitutionally and scientifically suspect laws. A bill approved Monday would prohibit citizens from deducting from their taxes money spent on an abortion or for supplemental health insurance to cover the procedure. It also would bar employers from deducting any money they contribute to a health plan for supplemental insurance coverage of an abortion, and ban corporations from taking a tax credit from contributions they make to Planned Parenthood. The bill’s provisions include applying sales taxes to any drugs used to perform or induce an abortion. Apparently pledges not to raise taxes don’t apply when the issue is abortion. The bill also requires physicians to tell women that an abortion poses a risk of breast cancer, even though mainstream science doesn’t support that link.
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office has paid outside lawyers nearly $597,000 so far to defend various anti-abortion laws enacted last year. But that may be just a drop in the bucket. The cases are still in the courts, so more attorney bills will be coming. And the Legislature seems bent on passing even more constitutionally suspect laws, such as requiring a fetal monitor to “make the embryonic or fetal heartbeat of the unborn child audible for the pregnant woman to hear.” Even though he has given a green light to lawmakers to pass anti-abortion bills, Gov. Sam Brownback has a fiscal responsibility not to sign bills that are sure to get tossed out by the courts.
It’s one thing for doctors and pharmacists to refuse to participate in abortions or to prescribe or dispense contraceptives – though that can create significant problems for women living in small towns. But the Kansas House went too far in expanding the state’s conscience law so that doctors and pharmacists don’t have to refer patients to other providers. That goes beyond protecting the consciences of doctors to imposing those views on patients. The House also is considering legislation that would limit the liability of doctors who lie to women about the condition of their pregnancies to try to prevent them from getting abortions, and that would require physicians to inform women seeking an abortion about the risk of breast cancer, even though mainstream science doesn’t support a link between abortion and breast cancer. Meanwhile, those on both sides of the abortion debate can’t believe that a former abortion doctor at a now-defunct clinic in Kansas City, Kan., put more than 1,000 patient files in a recycling container. The files, which included personal information about patients, were discovered by an Overland Park woman.
Do the abortion records still exist or not? That’s the puzzling question after an investigation of the supposed shredding of documents needed by prosecutors in a case against a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park. Last November, a judge dismissed 49 charges against the clinic because the Johnson County district attorney said the records had been shredded by the Attorney General’s Office in April 2009, triggering speculation by some anti-abortion activists that the Sebelius administration was involved in a cover-up. But the Shawnee County sheriff investigated and determined that none of the shredded documents was related to this case. An attorney for the clinic says that the records still exist and were held by the Attorney General’s Office as of last fall. So where are the records now?
Kari Ann Rinker, executive director of the National Organization for Women’s Kansas branch, didn’t show proper respect when she pulled out a rubber stamp during her testimony last week against a series of anti-abortion measures. “You can use it on every abortion bill that comes through here this session,” she told members of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, “and you can even share it with the governor if you like.” But Rinker is understandably frustrated with how the Legislature passes and Gov. Sam Brownback signs anti-abortion bills that seem to clearly violate federal rules and court decisions. As a result, the state spent about $1 million last year trying to defend the laws in court. This session lawmakers are again considering measures that defy the courts and mainstream science.
It’s amazing how flippant some state lawmakers are about the state’s legal bills, considering them just a cost of doing business. No, they are a cost of making bad laws. The Kansas Attorney General’s Office estimated last week that it will need an additional $1.2 million to defend likely challenges to the state’s new gun, abortion and drug-testing laws. It’s already spent more than $750,000 defending previous abortion laws (and cases are still in the courts). The Attorney General’s Office even told lawmakers earlier in the session that parts of the new gun law couldn’t be enforced and would spur costly lawsuits, but lawmakers passed the bill anyway. It’s as if they are spending other people’s money. No, wait – they are.
