Kansas House Passes Comprehensive Pro-Life Bill on Abortion

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 7, 2012   |   2:04PM   |   Topeka, KS

The Kansas state House has approved a comprehensive pro-life bill on abortion despite a massive misinformation campaign launched by leading pro-abortion groups and liberal media outlets.

The Pro-Life Protections Act, House sub 313, passed the Kansas House 88-31 today on final action. The pro-life measure would end tax advantages for businesses that perform abortion and stop tax-funding for abortion including abortion training at KU Med school. The bill also would ban sex-selection abortion, uphold the civil rights of the unborn throughout gestation to match their protection in criminal law, and protect the rights of parents to accurate medical information about childbirth.

Kansans for Life executive director, Mary Kay Culp, commented: “This common sense bill simply insures women have access to medical information compiled by Kansas health department professionals, protects human dignity in civil law, prevents Kansas taxpayers from subsidizing abortion, and poses zero threat to medical school accreditation.”

Abortion supporters have relied on the Huffington Post and other liberal outlets to spread falsehoods about the bill, and have launched several campaigns on the Internet to shut down the web page of pro-life Governor Sam Brownback by flooding him with emails.

The  ACLU has promoted Google ads for months falsely telling people that the bill would give pro-life OBGYNs a way to trick women into birthing children with disabilities or force abortion practitioners to instruct women that abortion causes breast cancer.

“The first false claim refers to the bill’s provision that would ban legal actions called wrongful birth and wrongful life lawsuits,” says Kathy Ostrowski, legislative director for Kansans for Life. “Ten other states (ID, IN, MI, MN, MO, ND.OK, PA, SD, UT) already have such law and this is not a limitation on malpractice suits for negligence, incompetence or other failures to adhere to standard of care medicine.”

The last recent publicized jackpot award for a wrongful birth case was $2.9 million against a physician group in Oregon. https://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/13/couple-wins-suit-doc-didnt-suggest-aborting-down-syndrome-baby/

“The suit was not based on “lying” by a physician, but because the standard test sample did not detect a chromosomal abnormality–a mosaic form of Down syndrome that does not show up in every cell,” Ostrowski said. “The complaint joined failure to perform the test perfectly with failure to do enough tests. Where does it end? None of these tests are 100% accurate and how many tests must be done when the tests themselves pose a variety of risks to the unborn child and the mother?”

She said pro-life advocates have no interest in deceiving women and there are no cases cited of information withheld by “pro-life”physicians intending to deceive their “pro-choice” pregnant patients.

Ostrowski explained: “Claims that a child should not be alive and should have been aborted advances the mentality that children are objects that can be rejected if physically imperfect. It also does disservice to the gains that the disability community have made. It was Gov. Sam Brownback who, as U.S. Senator for Kansas, initiated federal legislation requiring community disability resources be made known to women at the time of receiving prognoses of medical problems with their unborn children.”

The second false claim is that the bill would force abortion-providing physicians to instruct women that abortion causes breast cancer.

As Ostrowski notes, “For 14 years, the staff of the Kansas health department (KDHE) has included notice– in a very guarded manner– of possible increased risk of breast cancer and future preterm birth based on scientific facts. Over 50 years ago, the World Health Organization asserted that a full term pregnancy gives a woman the best lifetime protection against cancer. No scientific or medical group can deny this.”

She said the legislation commits most of the Woman’s Right to Know materials to statute– which is what a pregnant woman must reasonably be informed of concerning her pregnancy and she added that failure to provide informed consent is the crime of battery.

“Most physicians are careful in explaining potential risks because they know they can be sued– but abortionists know that “privacy” on this matter greatly inhibits the filing of such suits against them,” Ostrowski concluded. “The pretexts raised by pro-abortion legislators during debate of this bill–  that provisions of this bill threaten ongoing development of KU as an NCI Cancer center, as well as further accreditation of the med school– are groundless and show desperation.”