Two things to know at the outset: This column is about abortion.
And I hate writing about abortion.
Let me explain the second part first. I am pro-choice because I believe real issues of women’s freedom and health are at stake.
The last year since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade has furnished too many horror stories — about doctors refusing care to violently ill pregnant women, of a Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends for helping her obtain abortion pills — to believe otherwise.
So why the squeamishness?
Simple. I grew up in a small, conservative Kansas town — and attended a conservative, Christian college — among devoutly religious people who sincerely believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is a murderous act.
I still love those folks. It seems impossible that we’ll ever find a reasonable middle ground on the issue.
But I know that despite our disagreement, a lot of them seem honorable, acting on their best understanding of right and wrong.
The problem: Not all leaders and activists in the pro-life political movement act with a firm or honorable regard for the truth.
Which leads us to the news: A group of Kansas abortion providers announced Tuesday they’re suing the state, challenging the “Women’s Right to Know Act” further regulating abortion.
The Legislature passed the requirements updating a long-standing “informed consent” law during this past session, then overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
“We will not stand by as Kansans’ rights continue to be undermined,” said Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson, “especially after they made their support for abortion access resoundingly clear last summer.”
The lawsuit challenges several parts of the law, but perhaps the most prominent is a new requirement that providers tell patients: “It may be possible to reverse the intended effects of a medication abortion that uses mifepristone, if the woman changes her mind, but that time is of the essence.”
We don’t know whether that assertion is antiabortion fiction, though.
“Claims regarding abortion ‘reversal’ treatment are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says in its explainer on the subject, also calling the hormone doses it calls for “unethical.”
