American Civil Liberties Union

After her adventures in Oz, Dorothy couldn’t wait to get back to Kansas. But if she lived there now, she might not be so eager to return.  Governor Sam Brownback has just signed yet another bill that makes it more difficult for Kansas women to get the health care they need.

This behemoth 70-page sweeping anti-abortion bill attacks women’s health care from a variety of angles.  It could impose new taxes on a woman who obtains an abortion and on the health center where she obtained it, and it could require doctors to inform patients about a supposed link between abortion and breast cancer — a risk that the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and other medical experts roundly reject. The law also includes language about the legal rights of fertilized eggs, which lays the groundwork for even more extreme measures blocking access to reproductive health care.

Do we need another reminder about how state legislatures are a key battleground for women's health? Or about how so many politicians are out of touch? We do not. But we got one anyway.

Yesterday, the Missouri legislature voted to override Governor Jay Nixon's veto of SB 749, a bill that aims to undermine a woman's access to comprehensive health care. SB 749 attempts to allow employers to refuse to provide contraception coverage to their employees, despite the new federal rule that prevents such discrimination against women and the health care benefits they need.

The Kansas House passed an unwieldy 70-page bill, chock full of troubling provisions aimed at depriving a woman from receiving accurate information about her pregnancy, preventing her from accessing medical care and punishing health professionals who treat her. We need to make sure the Senate doesn't do the same.

Here are just a few examples of what this bill would do:

• It would provide legal protection to a doctor who discovers that a baby will be born with a devastating condition and deliberately withholds that information from his patient because he doesn't want her to seek an abortion. That means a doctor could decide to lie about the results of a woman's prenatal test so that she won't have information that she needs to make the best decision for her circumstances.
• The bill attempts to scare women by forcing doctors to tell patients about a supposed link between abortion and breast cancer — a risk that the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and other medical experts roundly reject .
• This bill would also require public hospitals to turn away a woman who desperately needs an abortion to prevent serious harm to her health. The extremists pushing this bill would have a hospital tell a very sick woman that she should come back when her pregnancy is about to kill her, even if that risks her future fertility or causes organ failure.
• And there's a provision that targets workers at women's health centers that provide abortion care. The bill could prohibit those workers from volunteering at their kids' school. We've seen a lot of bizarre provisions about women's health care, but this is one of the strangest. Imagine the nurse who helps care for women at the local clinic. When she wants to accompany her son on a class field trip will she be told to stay home unless she quits her job?