The judge in question clearly doesn’t follow Kansas political news, if the following is true:

In his 19-page order, Brown said the ACLU had failed to back up its
claim that legislators who passed the law this year primarily intended
to create obstacles to obtaining abortions.

So, unilaterally changing health codes to force the closure of clinics (without the input and against the objections of physicians), the passage of a late-term abortion ban that bans abortion at 20 weeks despite AMA and RCOG studies concluding that fetuses cannot feel pain, and a judiciary that refuses to hold a woman accountable for death threats against an abortion doctor aren’t enough to demonstrate the wackiness of so-called ‘pro life’ politics in Kansas and their determination to control women’s choices? (With violence if necessary.)

Personally, I’m perfectly cool with insurance dollars funding abortion, as well as the 97% of the other services provided by the clinics that Kansas is trying to shut down: Including contraceptives (birth
control); emergency contraception; screening for breast, cervical and
testicular cancers; pregnancy testing and pregnancy options counseling;
testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases; comprehensive
sexuality education, menopause treatments; vasectomies, and tubal ligations.

I especially support vasectomies and tubal ligations for all of the Republican schmucks in the state legislature who are passing these laws.

Now, where are the jobs bills these Republicans promised?

A federal judge has refused to block enforcement of a new Kansas law restricting insurance coverage for abortions.

U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown on Thursday rejected a request from the American Civil Liberties Union for a temporary injunction while the group challenges its constitutionality. The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in August.

“The state has no business depriving a woman of insurance for vital services that are already covered by most health plans,” said ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri legal director Doug Bonney. “If a woman and her doctor reach the decision that ending a pregnancy is the right choice for her and her family, she should have the peace of mind of knowing that her insurance will cover all of her medical needs.”

The Kansas law took effect July 1. It prohibits insurance companies from offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans, except when a woman’s life is at risk. Those who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies, known as riders, covering only abortion.

pierianspring:

Both. 

Everyone is pro-life. 

The question should be “Pro-choice or anti-choice?” because the issue isn’t if you are in favor of life or not (who the hell isn’t?) but if you are in favor of women being in charge of reproductive choices, or the state being in charge and making those choices for them.

I’m for women having the ability to make choices for themselves, and I trust women to make the choice that is right for them.

I don’t like abortion and I understand what a difficult choice it is for any woman to make, but I realize that the way to prevent abortions is not to outlaw them, as that only criminalizes and endangers women who obtain illegal abortions. The way to prevent abortions is to prevent unintended pregnancies through comprehensive sex education and the availability of low/no cost, hassle free birth control. 

And that said, even though I don’t like abortion, I believe they should be easy to obtain, safe, legal, and free to those who can’t afford to pay. Likewise, women who wish to keep a pregnancy and become a mother should have access to resources as well. All women’s reproductive choices should be honored and supported, and unfortunately as it is now, we offer very little support to women no matter what choice they make. It is sad and angering that the self-described “pro-life” crowd puts so much energy into opposing abortions and the women who have them, and not enough energy into supporting pregnant women who choose to keep their pregnancy and ultimately become mothers, or those who make the extremely difficult choice to give their baby up for adoption. As it is, in my eyes they are not at all “pro-life”, at least not toward adult women or infants and children. 

____

Reblogged because this is excellent commentary.  As a pro-choice activist, I often forget to remember that just as we need safe, affordable, and available abortion providers… we also need better health care for women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term.

Full disclosure: I support physician-assisted suicide, a person’s right to end their own life if they so choose in a humane fashion, and abortion on demand. Further, I don’t consider any of these positions to be antithetical to support for life or the living. If your position is unquestionably opposed to these, you might as well read something else.

Life means more than being composed of animated tissue, the possession of a beating heart, or any other cliché’ that so-called conservatives cling to in an effort to produce emotional responses from their ignorant and uneducated flock. To be truly pro-life, one must care about the quality of life that people have and use their political power to end the suffering people endure. History suggests that we, on the whole, care little for the quality of life that people have.

Despite the incessant screeching of the right-wing machine, our culture has demonstrated by collective actions that life is not something to which we give high priority. The United States has been perpetually at war for fifty years. We lost an entire generation of LGBT people to an AIDS epidemic that grew largely on religious hatred, right-wing bigotry, and cold ambivalence of government. In just the last five years our military has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the Middle East, either by our own hand or through those of allies that we supply with weapons of mass destruction at no cost to their own people. (And we’ve also displaced millions internationally with our wars.)

One of the world’s most popular brands of electronics, Apple, uses sweatshop labor in China to produce its products. Conditions in these factories are so bad, the management has forced workers to sign anti-suicide pledges as a condition of employment. More than forty people, several of them death row inmates, have seen their convictions dismissed based upon new evidence analysis techniques in the past fifteen years, and a handful have been denied compensation by the state for their wrongful imprisonment. One man was recently executed in Texas based upon insufficient evidence, a fact that the governor’s office attempted to cover up.

In the 90’s, the federal government interfered with a husband’s decision to let his permanently injured wife expire humanely, against the diagnosis of her doctors that she would never recover. We learned afterward that her brain had deteriorated by approximately 45%, and her doctors and husband were correct in their judgment. The media that crucified them failed to deliver an apology.

We imprisoned a man who had the audacity to provide terminally ill people with the means to end their own painful lives, of their own volition, in a humane and comfortable fashion. Additionally, our health care system is known worldwide to bankrupt people who suffer the misfortune of a terminal illness or permanent injury, that is, if they can obtain the care they need at all under their meager private insurance plans. Mitt Romney was recently made to apologize for the fact that his health care plan was emulated on a national scale, despite the fact that 98% of the people in his home state now have health care coverage because of this accomplishment.

However, people who support a ban on euthanasia and support the death penalty, international warfare, and the presumed right of the US Government to operate with impunity in the face of international law also, curiously, have the audacity to call themselves pro-life.

The injustices described above are not exhaustive by any means. It is more appropriate to describe them as the tip of an iceberg. My point remains, regardless of how many fetuses you save, you are not pro-life if you’re indifferent to peoples’ quality of life.

For background, see this link. The bill has been sent to the governor for his signature, and would do the following:

Except in the case of a medical emergency, no abortion of a viable unborn child shall be performed or induced unless the abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or when continuation of the pregnancy will create a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function or the pregnant woman.

It gets worse:

This act provides that, except in the case of a medical emergency, prior to performing or inducing an abortion upon any woman, the physician shall determine the gestational age of the unborn child. If the physician determines the unborn child is 20 weeks or more, the physician shall determine if the unborn child is viable.

There’s more, but this is the gist of it. You too can contact the governor about this outrage at this link.

___

Governor Nixon,

I had the pleasure to meet you and shake your hand before the Kansas/Missouri football game late last year, and I’ve always supported your candidacy because your votes have demonstrated you to be a man of intelligence and integrity. Sadly, these qualities are in short supply in Jefferson City these days.

I write today to encourage you to use your veto power on SB65 - Modifies provisions relating to abortion with respect to viability.  The state of Missouri has dozens of abortion restrictions on the books, restrictions designed to make abortion logistically impossible to obtain. (Similarly to the tactics that anti-choice activists have used in South Dakota.)

Recently, we’ve seen women in this country sent to jail for discussing the termination of a pregnancy as well as women with life threatening pregnancies nearly dead in hospitals where doctors refused to perform a life-saving abortion procedures.  If you pass this law, you will be empowering them further to spread their dangerous policies throughout the Show-Me State.

I humbly ask that you make an unequivocal statement.  Support the rights of women to decide these issues for themselves.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Ryan Stevens