Archive for Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Brownback signs anti-abortion bill

May 15, 2012


— Gov. Sam Brownback has signed legislation giving more legal protection to Kansas health care providers who refuse to participate in abortions.

Brownback’s office announced the signing Monday, although it took place last week. The governor is a strong abortion opponent and had been expected to sign the measure, which takes effect in July.

Kansas law already protects doctors and hospitals from being forced to participate in abortions. This year’s measure extends the so-called “conscience” protection to other health care facilities.

The legislation also says no individuals are required to refer patients for abortion services, or to participate in administering any drug they believe terminates a pregnancy.

Abortion opponents say the measure simply updates existing law. Supporters of abortion rights predict it will restrict access to birth control.


kansanjayhawk 2 years, 7 months ago

Thank you governor Brownback for restoring a culture of life to Kansas! Thank you for protecting our first amendment rights!

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

Are these lying doctors similar to the illegal immigrants voting, you know, common as unicorns?

jafs 2 years, 7 months ago

We'll find out, unfortunately.

Do you support this bill?

Right now, a doctor who withheld information could almost certainly be sued - once the bill becomes law, I imagine that won't be the case.

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

I don't support any bill that would allow doctors to lie to patients, no matter how remote the possibility. And I support efforts to make sure illegal immigrants aren't voting, no matter how remote the possibility.
A consistent position. How inconsistent of me.

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

Hey, Jafs, having shown my consistent policy, and knowing your strong desire for consistency, I had expected you to quickly agree with my position. You do, don't you?

MarchHare 2 years, 7 months ago

Hopefully a Doctor's conscience and hypocratic oath will still trump a law that says there won't be a penalty for with-holding information or refusing a referall for medicine, or surgery.

Especially considering that the oath will have "grandfather" precedence, a Dr. who witholds a referral for an abortion to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy or refuses for the same reasons, to refer a woman to have the abortion of a child as a product of rape will still be very liable, susecptible, and likely successfully sued.

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

And this law is not prevent doctors from lying, if they are.
Is that the way it goes?

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

This law does prevent doctors from lying, but it does prevent them for being punished when they do. Voter ID laws do not add any additional punishment for unicorn votes, but they do make it harder for real people to cast them.

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

The majority of eligible voters don't vote, except in presidential elections, when the percentages are still pretty bad. People have a thousand excuses for not voting. If I believed that voter ID presented a significant barrier to voters, I would be opposed to them. But I don't believe the barriers are significant and courts have ruled in favor of my position. If there are individuals who think this will be an obstacle, let them come forward now and be given assistance in obtaining whatever is necessary to allow them to vote. But should they come forward the day of the election, or the day after, then their complaints would be no different than if they had simply failed to register. Or is that, too, too high a hill to climb?

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

The courts aren't always right. Separate but equal, two generations of idiots are enough, corporations are people.

That said, I'd prefer the least restrictive method of enforcement. Since there's no evidence outside of gotcha videos that there's some sort of mass conspiracy to register ineligible voters and no evidence that these non existent voters are swaying election results, why make it even harder? If people want to abdicate their right to vote, that's on them, but it behooves us to pay attention to people who are intentionally squelching marginal viewpoints at the ballot box. That's not healthy for liberty. There's no reason why someone eligible to vote shouldn't be able to register and vote the day OF the election. Why should it be easier to buy a gun than it is to vote for someone?

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

It would be healthier for liberty, in my opinion, to have an informed electorate. Shall we institute a literacy test? Of course, literacy tests were outlawed by the courts or was that one of their mistakes? I'd like a system where everyone who votes would get $100. Talk about a stimulus. Then again, I'd be afraid of what more people voting would actually vote for. Rather than you and I speculating as to what may or may not be healthier for liberty, which is fine for a forum such as this, when it comes to actual policy, the courts may be the best forum to decide.

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

Don't fool yourself. They'd be suggesting literacy tests again if they thought they could get away with it.

The voting booth is where it gets decided. Doh! They just made it easier to keep an entrenched position on it. Liberty and justice for some.

Mike1949 2 years, 7 months ago

And the Republicans chip away a another Freedom of the people as Kansas takes another step towards the Dark Ages. Next comes the public display of people bound in stockades in the center of town for punishment of moral church laws.

This is just another step backwards to where abortions will go underground to filthy back rooms with women dying from massive blood loss and insides ripped up by amateurs for money. Just like Prohibition, laws to control morals never work and more people die. When are people going to learn?

JackMcKee 2 years, 7 months ago

I wish this site has an ignore poster option.

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

Or a rating system that let you ignore comments below a certain threshold. Something.

Sheryl Wiggins 2 years, 7 months ago

that would be a great option, for sure, and since it usually takes me one glance at a "new" user to realize it's the same ol' user with just a different name, I would be adding to my "ignore" list daily. Which would generate hits for the comment section. win-win for all.

usnsnp 2 years, 7 months ago

Just wait for the first law suit when a woman dies because of this law. I guess the state has plenty of money to pay to lawyers.

mom_of_three 2 years, 7 months ago

and when a woman dies due to this law, are you going to celebrate that, too?

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

Or when a baby dies due to this law because the specialists aren't in place at the birth. Or when an incompetent doctor uses this law as a shield to cover his error.

jhawkinsf 2 years, 7 months ago

Or when a flying unicorn swoops down and carries the child off to never never land.

MarchHare 2 years, 7 months ago

Its odd that you chose such exaggeration here.. considering that neither of the aforementioned replies are either unreasonable or outlandish.

I'll just go on hoping your sarcasm failed to translate properly in text.

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

He's just grumpy because of the cognitive dissonance of his anti liberty position with regard to voter ID laws. He's trying to force a false parallel with this lying to women act, but it's apples and oranges, and he knows it.

Armored_One 2 years, 7 months ago

Continued support of life?

You are ascribing that action with the same political group that has proceeded, at every junction possible, to reduce and/or eliminate funding for children AFTER they are born.

Education. Social services. SRS.

If it didn't cost as much as it does to run for governor, I'd gladly run, just to have a chance to tell Brownback the only thing he cares about is what direction the political winds are blowing.

Okay, two things.

The political winds and whether they are blowing across the pile of manure stacking up behind him.

pocket_of_sunshine 2 years, 7 months ago

Right, because I "chose" to get raped as a virgin and "chose" to get pregnant from that... is that what you are saying? Of course it is, because I am sure that I somehow managed to bring it on myself. After all, being born with a vagina is enough of a reason for a man to rape me..

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

Don't forget that women also "choose" to have a baby with a trisomy disorder so severe that the baby had no chance of survival, but your doctor gets to choose how you'll mourn the loss. Because he's pro "life."

somedude20 2 years, 7 months ago

Wow....even as a man, I am offended by what you wrote.

chootspa 2 years, 7 months ago

Hmm, I missed the section where it insists you visit a doctor who lies to you. Perhaps you've read the entire bill and can give us a citation?

JackMcKee 2 years, 7 months ago

Rumor has it that some in the Church don't think very highly of old Sammy B, regardless of his abortion crusade. I guess his other hobby, persecuting the sick, old, poor and downtrodden is trumping any "browny" points he's getting from railroading women's reproductive rights. Browny might show up for church and find no bread in the bowl and no wine in the cup.

JackMcKee 2 years, 7 months ago

Yeah, it's just so hard to believe that Catholic Priests actually believe the stuff that's in the bible.

JackMcKee 2 years, 7 months ago

have you read it lately? sounds like you're a little rusty.

sciencegeek 2 years, 7 months ago

I wonder if the bill would have been passed if it included the refusal to sell condoms. They're a form of birth control, too.

yourworstnightmare 2 years, 7 months ago

Of course he did. Freedom is on the march in the great state of Kansas.

Ragingbear 2 years, 7 months ago

Scum supporting scum that think that women are property. The Grand Old Party indeed.

Jake Hess 2 years, 7 months ago

What does this legislation mean for health care providers and facilities that do decide to administer abortions and birth control? Where the hell is their legal protection? This all just means health insurance companies will drop birth control from coverage plans because of the heat from the GOP thugs in Topeka. Great planning, Browny. Way to legislate women's vaginas and confine the biggest decisions of their lives to the outskirts of society. If I were a freedom-loving woman, I'd leave this scary state. It's only going to get much, much worse.

MarchHare 2 years, 7 months ago

I think, ultimately, whether Brownback signs it or not is irrelevant. You have to realize that all it will take is one court case being filed as a result of this law and this hog wash will collapse under the weight of the Supreme Court's scrutiny. The precedent not only treads on a woman's first amendement rights but sets a woman's life as "less" than the life of her unborn child... I highly doubt this is a slope the country is going to be willing to go sledding on with Kansans.

Cait McKnelly 2 years, 7 months ago

"The precedent not only treads on a woman's first amendement rights but sets a woman's life as "less" than the life of her unborn child..." And yet, oddly, this idea that a woman's life is of less value than that of her unborn child is taking half of the country by storm. The idea that women are chattel and only good for breeding is a concept that baked into the desert Abramaic religions for millenia. Yet true Christians don't feel that way (especially if they have the intelligence to ignore any Pauline influence). Check out AUL and their cookie cutter legislation (that is oh-so-similar to ALEC's) and understand that these are men who know they have women by the short and curlies (figuratively and literally) and intend to keep it that way.

MarchHare 2 years, 7 months ago

Oh, I agree. I suppose I still have some deeply ingrained altruistic faith in the American people, for better or worse. But, just because the idea may be storming the country (read: majority), doesn't mean they're right. Heck, if they all decided to leap off a bridge, I'd be safely grounded in my lawn chair having a good laugh. Especially given all the warnings I got from my parents about such dangerous band-wagoning. heh.

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