Last Thursday, attorneys for the father/daughter abortion team at the Overland Park, Kansas, Center for Women’s Health (CFWH) quietly obtained a restraining order from Judge Franklin R. Theis blocking new Kansas abortion facility rules from going into effect Monday, Nov. 14.
So far, no hearing date is posted on the court website. The filing, #11C-1298 in Shawnee County (Topeka) District Court, also
asked for a preliminary and permanent injunction against the new health department (KDHE) rules and a bench ruling striking them down.
CFWH abortionists, Herb Hodes and Traci Nauser, had obtained a July 1 injunction in federal court against the provisional KDHE abortion facility rules designed to expire Nov. 14. As is the usual process in Kansas, new laws go into effect with temporary agency rules, allowing a public input period before the permanent rules are enacted.
In the permanent rules, published Oct. 27, KDHE accommodated a few of the abortionists’ complaints. KDHE expanded the room temperature mandate, shortened the post-op stay, removed minimum room sizes and reduced the number of limited-access restrooms, but that was not enough to keep CFWH from suing.
Among their legal claims, the abortionists assert that the KDHE rules:
- “are oppressive, unreasonable and arbitrary government interference that would significantly impair, if not altogether eliminate …their existing medical practice”;
- violate abortionists’ rights, and those of their patients under the Kansas Bill of Rights;
- perpetuate “the patronizing and paternalistic stereotype that women are in need of special ‘protection’ not needed by men”;
- allow KDHE access to patients’ complete records “without adequate justification.”
The patient privacy complaint, as well as claims of vagueness and unjustified state regulation, were raised by South Carolina abortionists during the extensive litigation over their state abortion facility rules, by the same attorney involved in this suit, Bonnie Scott Jones. Abortionists lost all their claims in the 4th Circuit appellate court, and were refused review by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001.
Hodes and Nauser also complain that Kansas will require:
- patients at all times be monitored by licensed, CPR-trained personnel;
- drugs and medications only be administered by medically licensed personnel;
- that physicians must administer abortion pills (no chemical abortions via “webcam”);
- medical emergencies be limited to protecting the life, not ‘health’ of the mother.
COURT SHOPPING?
It’s very interesting that the abortion business’ legal team has changed venues, having filed this new case in a state court, presumably so if they lose in the first round, they can get their appeal up to the abortion-leaning, Sebelius-stacked state supreme court. (see KansasMeadowlark here)
Otherwise, were they still pursuing their case in federal court, their appeal would have been taken up by the more moderate 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Theis has been on the bench 35 years and is well respected, though he angered the public in 2004 when he issued ‘light’ sentences for three child rapists. Judge Theis’ father, Frank Gordon Theis, was a U.S. judge for the district of Kansas for 31 years until his death in 1998.
LifeNews.com Note: Kathy Ostrowski is the legislative director for Kansans for Life, a statewide pro-life group.
