First Kansas abortion bill of 2023: It’s everything we voted not to do and then some | Opinion

The Kansas Legislature now has its first abortion bill on the docket of the post-Roe v. Wade era — and the first since Kansans voted to protect abortion rights by defeating the “Value Them Both” constitutional amendment.

It’s become fashionable these days to call things “extremist” when they’re really not. House Bill 2181 truly earns that label.

This bill would put women’s constitutional rights through the shredder, more than once — along with striking at the very heart of the American constitutional form of government.

The bill would ban abortion in virtually all cases, except to remove an already dead fetus.

But it doesn’t stop there.

It would create a new crime of “unlawful destruction of a fertilized embryo.”

That’s aimed at couples who can’t conceive by ordinary means and turn to in vitro fertilization for help.

It’s standard medical practice to inject multiple embryos to give the best chance of a successful pregnancy, but to remove some if too many implant in the uterus for the mother to safely carry them all to term.

Stunningly, either abortion or embryo reduction would be a Level 1 person felony, on the same level with capital murder, terrorism, or using weapons of mass destruction.

The penalty, starting at 20 years in prison, could be applied to both the person who performs the procedure and the pregnant woman.

This is the exact approach to abortion that Kansans came out in droves to defeat last August, when the Legislature put the “Value Them Both” constitutional amendment on the ballot.

But it appears at least some of our legislators didn’t get the message that was sent loud and clear by the voters, who rejected Value Them Both by a six to four split.

And it exposes the Big Lie of the Value Them Both campaign — that nobody really wanted to ban abortions, just subject it to “reasonable regulation.”

You may have thought when we voted “no” in August that that would be the end of it. But if HB2181 were to pass into law, it’s not even close.

While the bill’s whereases claim it fulfills the Kansas Constitution, it actually take a flamethrower to it.

It would do away with the separation of powers that’s the core principle of American governance.

In our system, the Legislature makes laws and the courts rule on whether those laws comply with the guarantees of individual rights in the federal and state constitutions.

The ill-fated Value Them Both amendment sought to change the state Constitution, to circumvent a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies including, under certain limited circumstances, to end a pregnancy.

HB2181 would take the beyond-radical step of actually punishing judges who disagree with the Legislature. From its text: “any judge of this state who purports to enjoin, stay, overrule or void any provision of this act shall be subject to impeachment and removal.”

It’s un-American and frankly, insane.

For now, I’ll have confidence that more rational heads will prevail in the Statehouse and this bill never makes it out of committee.

I can’t imagine Gov. Laura Kelly would ever sign it, unlike her predecessor, Sam Brownback, who famously vowed to sign any anti-abortion legislation that got to his desk.

But it’s worth noting the old saying that nothing ever dies under the dome. We’ll have to keep a close watch to make sure that the poisonous concepts in HB2181 don’t slide into some other bill in the flurry of legislative activity that always happens at the end of the session.

HB2181 has seven co-sponsors, all Republicans: Trevor Jacobs of Fort Scott, Brett Fairchild of St. John, Randy Garber of Sabetha, Jason Goetz of Dodge City, Scott Hill of Abilene, Michael Murphy of Sylvia and Bill Rhiley of Wellington.

If you live in one of their districts, hopefully you now realize that you’ve made a tremendous mistake by sending them to Topeka to represent you.

Sadly, it will be two years before you can fix it.