The Kansas House of Representatives is considering an anti-abortion bill introduced by Republican Rep. Lance Kinzer, that would make it drastically more difficult for women to have the procedure. Buried in the 69 page bill were multiple anti-abortion provisions that have already been proposed in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona, which could make this bill by far the most extreme anti-abortion bill in America. And Governor Brownback intends to sign it into law when it gets through the legislature. The bill would impose a 6.3% tax on all abortions. Even women who are raped would have to pay it if they want the procedure. And women who have emergency abortions to save their lives wouldn’t be exempt from the tax either. Part of the bill would also allow doctors to lie to women about prenatal problems that may cause them to choose abortion, such as an ectopic pregnancy, which is fatal in most cases. This provision is similar to a bill passed by the Arizona Senate on Tuesday. The Kansas bill also forces doctors to tell women that abortion causes breast cancer, which is a total lie that has been debunked by medical science. It could also revoke the accreditation of the University of Kansas Medical Center’s OB-GYN program and would force women to hear the heart beat of the fetus before getting an abortion.
This bill makes the lives of women in Kansas a living hell. It would make abortion more costly and would cause pregnant women to lose trust in their medical providers. How can women truly trust their doctors if they are allowed to keep critical medical information from them? It would also be a serious violation of privacy and could affect birth control medication.
Sarah Gillooly of Planned Parenthood says that the bill could require those who enforce the tax to view the private medical records of women, which would violate medical privacy laws, and could apply a sales tax on contraception. Gillooly asks, “How does Walgreens tax abortion medication and not birth control?”
Republicans have gone way over the edge with this bill. They are literally putting government directly into the private lives of women. Pregnant women will no longer have control over their health care decisions and privacy. They will be force fed false information about abortion while critical medical information could be withheld from them by their own doctors. Women will even find it more difficult to access contraception because Kansas Republicans intend to make it more expensive. It also endangers the overall health of women because by killing OB-GYN programs, women would be at greater risk of cancers and infections that gynocologists check for. This is the most sickening anti-abortion bill in any state in America. At this point, if women care about their personal liberty and their right to make their own decisions about their bodies, they should probably abandon Kansas and let the men live there by themselves. Because Kansas has certainly become the most difficult place to be a woman. Conservative white men have declared all-out war against women in America. It’ll take a new women’s rights movement to fight back.