Kansas legislature passes weird new abortion law
Roe v. Wade still stands, for now, which means red states like Missouri and Kansas can’t outlaw abortions within their borders. Instead, Republican legislators get together, worship fetuses, and dream up weird new laws that make it hard for women to exercise their constitutional right to make decisions about their bodies.
The latest example of this creepy phenomenon is a bill in Kansas called SB 98. It is a plain attempt to harass abortion providers by requiring them to disclose to women information (credentials, malpractice insurance, disciplinary record) that is not required of surgeons performing higher-risk procedures. The particularly absurd part of this bill is that it micromanages this process down to, quite literally, the letter: The information must be provided on “on white paper in a printed format in black ink with 12-point times new roman font,” according to the language of the bill.
But there are other, more pernicious qualities to SB 98, as articulated in this letter written in opposition to the bill by Wichita doctor Alan Fearey:
Bret Gordon, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Kansas, said in a separate letter that the bill “seeks to interfere with womens’ access to pregnancy termination” and that “none of the measures listed would facilitate improvement in delivering safe patient care.”
Robert Eye of the reproductive rights group Trust Women Foundation argued earlier this year that the law would open up the state to a legal challenge, noting that the Supreme Court has previously made clear that “restrictions that cause substantial obstacles to abortion without a corresponding health benefit for women are unconstitutional.” Eye succinctly summed up the situation:
“This bill is clearly nothing more than an attempt to single out abortion providers for differential treatment without any evidence that such yields even a minimal health benefit for women. If the Kansas legislature believes patients should know this information in order to achieve informed consent, they should mandate these disclosures for all medical procedures. Anything short of that is a bald-faced attempt at stigmatizing and singling out abortion providers and causing fear and insecurity about a safe medical procedure.”
The pro-life Family Policy Alliance calls SB 98 a “necessary update” that will “bring critical transparency to the decision to undergo an abortion procedure.”
Today, the Kansas Senate approved the bill by a 25-15 vote. It passed in the House last week. Gov. Sam Brownback will sign it, unless sometime in the next few days he experiences a conversion to a new religion that respects women.
