Kansas Legislature Sends Bill to Limit Late-Term Abortions to Governor Sebelius
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 5, 2009
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — The Kansas legislature has completed the approval process for a bill that would place more limits on late-term abortions. The bill requires abortion practitioners to provide the state health department with detailed information about why the abortion was done.
The legislature approved H Sub 218 with the House casting a final vote of 82-43 for the bill and the Senate voting 25-11 for it.
While the measure to strengthen the late-term abortion law passed with large majorities, it fell two votes short in both chambers of the margin necessary to override a veto by pro-abortion Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Once Governor Sebelius receives the legislation, which will likely occur sometime early next week, she will have 10 days to either sign the bill, allow it to become law without signature, or to veto it.
Kathy Ostrowski, the legislative director for Kansans for Life, tells LifeNews.com that her group will work hard if a veto override vote is needed.
"Both chambers are two votes shy of override, but these numbers are not set in stone," she said.
"LeRoy Carhart does late-term abortions with George Tiller every few weeks in Wichita. Carhart has twice battled all the way to the US Supreme Court to protect his ‘right’ to use this grizzly partial birth procedure," Ostrowski noted. "When Kansans contact lawmakers to ask why they did not adopt the best available restrictions on partial birth abortions with the number-one promoter of such a procedure here in our state, the vote to achieve override should improve."
Most of H Sub 218 was taken from the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, vetoed last year by the governor, without two provisions to which she objected.
"The measure closes loopholes in diagnostic reporting for post-viability abortions and improves the partial birth abortion law to exclude ‘mental health’ reasons, using Supreme Court-approved language," Ostrowski explained.
The approval of the bill comes on the heels of a jury acquitting late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller of charges the state attorney filed against him for allegedly violating another late-term abortion law requiring a second, independent physician to sign off on the validity of the abortions.
Hours after the verdict, the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, the agency that monitors doctors in the state, announced that it is considering taking action against Tiller’s medical license.
Related web sites:
Kansas Legislature – https://www.kslegislature.org
Kansans for Life – https://www.kfl.org
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