By Kathy Ostrowski, Legislative Director
Kansans for Life
The Kansas House on Wednesday passed HB 2253, an updated version of last year’s Pro-Life Protections Act, by a vote of 92-31. The bill passed without any of the four amendments and will:
- remove tax breaks for abortionists and tax funding of abortion & abortion training; codify the informed consent already created and in use by KDHE (state health department); unify abortion statute definitions; adopt ‘Life begins at conception/fertilization’ as basis for legislation; and improve support for medically-challenging pregnancies and disabled children.
Reporters in Kansas routinely channel a handful of adjectives and adverbs favored by pro-abortionists to describe whatever piece of pro-life legislation is offered.
In the case of HB 2253, the bill is, of course, “sweeping.” The added distortion is that the bill would “force” doctors to lie to women by saying that abortion causes breast cancer. It does nothing of the sort.
The most vocal opponent was long-retired anesthesiologist, Rep. Barbara Bollier with her perennial complaint that the bill was medically inaccurate. “I’m so disappointed in you all who have not gone to medical school, who have not gone to nursing school and think you know better,” she said to the House. “It’s shameful”
But it is Rep. Bollier who has many ‘facts’ wrong. For example, there is no phrase “abortion causes breast cancer” in the state informed consent materials, or in this bill that codifies those materials—no matter how many times she repeats that bogus assertion.
Near the end of debate she was made to admit that the first full-term pregnancy is well known to reduce the risk of breast cancer when a woman completes a full-term pregnancy. But Bollier denied the logic of alerting a woman who is experiencing her first pregnancy that she loses the protective effect of childbearing when a woman aborts that pregnancy!
The first of Boiller’s three hostile amendments attempted to remove, from Woman’s Right to Know abortion informed consent materials, the topic of elevated pre-term birth and breast cancer risks. The Kansas Department of Health & Environment has been already been doing so since 1997 (even without the statutory specificity) because the KDHE assessed it as relevant information.
Then Bollier tried to delete from the same materials information describing the pain capability of the unborn child. As she did two years ago when fighting passage of a law that would protect from abortion unborn children capable of feeling pain, Bollier insisted no science backs the assertion that the unborn can feel pain at 20 weeks post fertilization. This time, her defense was more astounding.
First, Bollier—who has not practiced medicine for 14 years-was flat out wrong when she told House members that anesthesia is never given to unborn children directly, but only through their mothers. Some surgeries do rely on maternal anesthesia passing into the placenta, but a quick Google search shows NIH articles about direct application of fetal anesthesia including, obviously, during fetal surgery.
Then, in an even more insistent and embarrassing display, Bollier argued that unborn children can’t feel pain, or “feel” a stress reaction, they can only “mount” a stress reaction!
Rep Lance Kinzer, who is the House Judiciary Committee chairman and HB 2253 sponsor, rebutted Bollier:
“When it comes to stress reactions I imagine an unborn child does indeed experience stress when being dismembered and having arms and legs torn off.”
Rep. Kinzer then cited the ample scientific evidence found at www.doctorsonfetalpain.org.
Freshman Rep. Shanti Gandhi, a retired surgeon, stood in strong support of the bill:
“I come here to confirm one fact that’s indisputable, at least in my case having studied medicine, that is that life does start at conception. If we believe that, I think this bill is too long. All it needs is one paragraph that says life begins at conception.”