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Rape? Incest? Deathly ill? Who cares!

Lauren

A lawsuit has been filed in Kansas to have abortion outlawed and have the court declare that rights begin at conception.

The attorney general of Kansas filed a lawsuit last week against Governor Kathleen Sebelius, arguing that use of state money to finance abortions violates the state constitution. Medicaid currently pays for abortions resulting from rape, incest, or when the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s life. Kansas’ constitution, however, protects individuals’ “inalienable natural rights,” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In his lawsuit, AG Phill Kline says using Medicaid to pay for abortions is contrary to those protections, and he also requests that the court agree that life begins at conception. A spokesperson for the Kansas attorney general says Kline is simply doing what the state legislature instructed him to do in 2002 when the State House voted to ask the courts to determine the legality of state funding for abortions. Kline’s lawsuit has the backing of pro-life state representative Lance Kinzer and the group Kansas Right to Life.

Until someone advocates criminalization of abortion outright, I say it’s all grandstanding.

9 thoughts on Rape? Incest? Deathly ill? Who cares!

  1. SO…
    If the idiots in Kansas pass this, and a mother whose life is threatened due to a pregnancy (for example the episode of House on last night had a woman with small cell lung cancer who needed to abort the baby to get chemo) cannot get needed treatment because of this law, then can the mother sue the state for blocking her access to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?

    I’m just wondering…

  3. I wonder if aforementioned mother would be tried for endangering the llife of her child if she got chemo and miscarried. Would medicaid and the state pick up the 100% tab for a child actually born alive after the mother had treatment and will they now require (and pay for) all women to remain on life-support even after death if they so much as have a positive pregnancy test?

  4. “The attorney general of Kansas filed a lawsuit last week against ”

    Sounds like someone is planning to run for Governor

  5. This is the guy pawing through medical records of minors to see if they’ve had abortions, piously declaring that he’s doing it for their own good, because clearly sexual abuse isn’t being reported.

    Sounds to me like somebody’s gearing up a test case in anticipation of having Roberts on the Supreme Court.

  6. it is grandstanding, but most of this stuff is. the lawsuit is doomed to fail. it has a mountain of precedent going the other way

    but for many of these “culture war” issues, it’s not really about winning the legal battle in the short run, it’s about stirring up the faithful and keeping them excited. it was the same thing with terri schiavo. once the FL supreme court ruled there was no chance of winning anymore. and yet congress passed a blatently unconstitutional law just to lead on their base for a little while longer.

    raising hopes, dashing them, and then campaigning against the corrupt liberal establishment (or judiciary or whoever) is what it’s all about. the abortion issue is just a means to an end

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  8. Isn’t this the guy who wanted women’s private medical records “to look for evidence of child molestation” or some such? I think somebody from the Prevention of Logical Conservatives called him up and reminded him his reasoning still had fewer holes than a fishnet. I guess the obvious intimidation potential, the privacy invasions, and the assumption that only women who have late-term abortions are ever victims of sexual abuse, weren’t enough.

  9. I think, regarding Agog’s question, yes, she could, and in addition, any woman with an unwanted pregnancy could sue the state for violating her rights to liberty and the persuit of happiness.

    Of course, one could just have the fetus declared an enemy combatant under the Patriot Act, and it would lose all its constitutional protections.

    Then again, one could also charge the state with embezzlement of some kind. The state is protecting life on paper, but they’re not the ones doing the work! In any case of unwanted pregnancy, the state would be forcing some of its citizens to work, unpaid, with overtime, no days off, and significant physical discomfort and limitations, for something that the state values but the people in question generally don’t, and they won’t even compensate those women for maternity leave while they recover! At the same time, they would be guilty of discrimination, because all of the people forced to work in this manner would be women, and there is no corresponding requirement for men.

    Then again, if fetuses are granted these rights, one could invoke the fetus’s right to liberty, and have it removed unkilled, and it would no longer be the mother’s problem. Right to life only means the right to not be killed; it does not include the right to not die. Otherwise the family members of EVERYONE who dies of illness, accident, or old age could sue the government for not adequately protecting the deceased’s right to life.

    Kansas legalizes statutory rape via marriage? They think a girl who’s not competent to make a decision to have sex, is competent to make a decision to get married? Anyway, I thought Tennessee was the only state that said marital rape wasn’t rape. This is not the answer to this problem. The only ways statutory rape should be made not statutory rape is if psychologists find the young person in question to be competent & mature enough to have made that decision, or if once she becomes an adult she still believes she was not manipulated or coerced, and was at the time (in her now-adult judgement) capable of making that decision. Of course, in Kansas the powers that be tend to think that sex is always the wrong decision and marriage is always the right decision.

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