Those who resent big government interfering in their personal decisions were heartened by Fridays decision by the Kansas Supreme Court. By a 6-1 margin, the Court declared that the Kansas Constitution protects a womans right to an abortion, regardless of who happens to be ruling in Topeka.
Because thats what the debate over abortion has become a tool for election.
On cue, those holding positions of power in the Kansas legislature decried the Courts ruling saying they would launch an initiative to amend the state Constitution to categorically ban abortion.
The high courts ruling speaks to a 2015 Kansas law that forbade widely practiced medical procedures used during second-trimester abortions, including the use of forceps.
Were they to come clean, legislators would admit that rather than genuinely considering these pregnant women, they are kowtowing to one-issue voters and those who give generously to their war chests.
Hours after Fridays ruling, Ron Ryckman, Speaker of the House, said the high courts ruling was counter to the Constitutional and the moral beliefs our state was founded on.
The Court took the opposite view, saying our Constitution affords protection of the right of personal autonomy, which includes the ability to control ones own body. Yes, that autonomy extends to women, too even when pregnant.
INCREASINGLY, Kansas legislators have chipped away at a womans right to have control over her body.
The 2015 law made it all but impossible for a woman in her second trimester to have an abortion a procedure performed only in the direst cases.
Just this session, legislators ruled physicians must endorse a highly disputed practice of reversing medication abortions with high levels of progesterone, which Gov. Laura Kelly wisely vetoed.
With each generation, the stigma against abortion is waning, in part because as a whole its numbers continue to fall, thanks to widespread access to contraception. The majority of abortion patients 75 percent are indigent, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Of those, nearly two-thirds already have children.
We can help this demographic by making contraception more affordable and available. Conversely, we harm women when we prevent them from taking their health into their own hands.
Younger generations are also teaching us about tolerance across a whole spectrum of issues. In regards to abortion, they show us that we help each other by regarding it as the deeply personal and moral decision it is and to be respectful of each others point of view.
Thats the positive way forward.
Susan Lynn
