The Kansas state House passed two important pro-life bills today, the Abortion Reporting Accuracy & Parental Rights Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
The House signed off on HB 2218, the fetal pain bill, on a 91-30 vote. The measure is landmark legislation, already law in Nebraska, banning abortion after 22 weeks gestation due to the unborn child’s pain capability.
The second bill, HB 2035, received a 96-25 vote and the measure strengthens parental involvement for pregnant minors, improves judicial bypass protocol, acknowledges that abortion will terminate the life of a separate, whole, unique living human being, and includes provisions preventing abortion fraud that were passed but vetoed three times in the past by Governors Sebelius and Parkinson.
Kathy Ostrowski, the legislative director of Kansans for Life, told LifeNews.com she is thrilled by the results.
“We are ecstatic that the House has acted to pass these bills, which ensure that the abortion reporting fraud of the past decade is never repeated, eliminate any rubber-stamp judicial approval of abortion for pregnant teens and bring updated medical evidence to bear in treating abortion as a barbaric act,” she said.
About the fetal pain bill, Ostrowski added that “the human unborn child feels pain more acutely than any other age infant, child or adult because the biological development of pain suppressors does not mature until 40 weeks gestation.”
She said HB 2218 will “help the nationwide pro-life movement establish that, despite Roe v. Wade, the states have a compelling interest not only in protecting the life of the unborn but in protecting our society from further descending into the barbarism of permitting the intentional inflicting of abortion torture on tiny, pain-feeling humans.”
KFL is now challenging the Senate to approve both of the bills and send them to Governor Sam Brownback, who has already promised to sign them into law.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is sponsored by 47 state representatives under the leadership of Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe).
HB 2218 bans abortions at 22 weeks gestation (20 weeks post-conception) due to the scientific evidence that not only do unborn children feel pain, they feel it more acutely because pain “dampeners” do not fully develop until 40 weeks gestation, and later.
Before the House vote, a committee heard from pro-life pediatricians from Parsons and Topeka with phone-in advice from a Washington state maternal-infant specialist. Abortion supporters opposing HB 2218 testified as well but brought no intellectual firepower to counter the medical experts that had testified definitively for the pro-life side. The House Federal & State Affairs committee asked opponents if they had any scientific or medical information relevant to the bill. They had none, other than mentioning a 2005 discredited article.
Section 3 allows the induction of an abortion upon a woman when gestational age is 22 or more weeks if “in reasonable medical judgment” she has a condition which so complicates her medical condition as to necessitate the abortion to avert her death or to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function [related]
“This language is fully adequate to cover circumstances in which termination of a pregnancy is truly medically necessary,” Ostrowski said. “Other than a true maternal physical medical situation or life-threatening condition, HB 2218 will ban abortions after 22 weeks gestation (20 weeks post-fertilization). This will prevent abortions sought for the emotional or mental health of the mother, or for the severity of a fetal condition.”
Ostrowski concluded: “Kansans are ashamed of the thousands of abortions that were done in Wichita using this “mental health loophole”–not to help save the mother’s life or prevent substantial, irreversible damage to her body.”
