If Kansas and Missouri AGs get their way, access to abortion drug will end | Opinion

Being an attorney general is usually a pretty sweet job.

You’re the top law enforcement officer in your state — relatively famous as far as attorneys go, putting your decades of knowledge and experience to use to work in public service with a job that’s often a springboard to the governor’s mansion or beyond. And if that doesn’t work out, there’s usually some pretty lucrative private sector gigs waiting for you.

Most of the time, you even get your portrait hung in the office hallway after you leave, for future visitors to ponder for decades to come. It’s a little bit of immortality.

So why does it seem like Kris Kobach and Andrew Bailey would rather go to work for the Food and Drug Administration in Washington D.C.?

Here’s the reason for the question: The Kansas and Missouri attorney generals — along with Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador — last week asked a federal judge in Texas to let them join a lawsuit aimed at reversing longstanding FDA decisions that have made the abortion drug mifepristone widely available to women across the United States.

Decisions about what pills and medicines are approved for use by the American public are almost always made at the federal level. But Kobach, Bailey and Labrador seem to believe they ought to have a bigger say.

The FDA “failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved risky, untested chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States,” the trio say in the brief filed Nov. 3.

Apparently, federal medical rules that apply to everybody across the United States can only be made with permission from a few of the most conservative politicians in the most conservative states.

Never mind what their constituents think.

Kansas voters last year overwhelmingly defended abortion rights against conservative efforts to restrict and ban the practice. Indeed, Kobach won office last year with fewer votes and a smaller portion of the electorate than the “no” vote on the anti-abortion measure did just a few months earlier.

And if history is any guide — did you see how the red state of Ohio voted to protect abortion rights this week? — Missouri voters will probably do the same during a referendum next year.

Attorneys general fight LGBTQ books, Joe Biden

Kobach and Bailey’s decision to join the mifepristone lawsuit comes on the heels of another joint effort. As David Mastio pointed out this week in The Kansas City Star, the two recently weighed in on a Maryland case aimed at letting parents opt their children out of LGBTQ-themed books and lessons.

Wherever there’s a conservative cause to be fought — no matter how far beyond the borders of Kansas and Missouri — you can be sure that Kobach and Bailey will be there. That’s true even if the cause has nothing to do with their legal duties: The two, for example, joined a coalition of attorney generals condemning Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Which, great. But also: What, exactly, can they do about that mess?

To be fair, Kansas voters are getting exactly what they were promised when Kobach campaigned for office last year. He said he would use the attorney general’s office to challenge President Joe Biden’s policies. That’s exactly what he’s done.

Missouri voters, of course, haven’t yet had a chance to give Bailey their support. Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to replace the departed Eric Schmitt, who went to the U.S. Senate.

You know: Where the job really is to make federal policy.

Let me try to be completely fair here: If Kobach and Bailey were Democrats filing lawsuits against Republican policies, would I be grumbling so much about how they’ve turned their state jobs into federal platforms?

Maybe not. Or at least, not quite so loudly. But I would love to find out.

In any case, it’s still fair to question whether it’s good for Kansas and Missouri that their attorneys general seem to focus their efforts so much outside the states they serve. And it’s worth wondering if voters in the two states really want Kris Kobach and Andrew Bailey to determine abortion policy for the entire country.

Joel Mathis is a regular Star Opinion correspondent. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and son. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.