By Melvina Young, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist 2007

Abortion rights oponents think women are stupid: They don't think women understand what terminating a pregnancy means. The real question is whether Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius agrees.

Thanks to a new law pushed by abortion rights opponents and recently signed into law by Sebelius, women seeking to terminate a pregnancy now have the "right" to see a sonogram and hear a fetal heartbeat before an abortion procedure.

Just when did women seeking abortions demand this "right"? Is this a "right" for which women's rights advocates were battering down the door? More importanly, where in our country were women being denied the right to see a sonogram or hear a fetal heartbeat before a procedure?

The answers are "never,no and nowhere."

Not that it matters because abortion rights opponents with the help of Sebelius have delivered this right for us.

Thanks. But, no thanks.

Based on the logic of this new law, why don't we let the Klan write laws on the equal treatment of African-Americans, Jews and gays? Or, we could invite renowned anti-theist Christopher Hitchens to draft "protections" for Americans of religious faith. Or, we could see if Kentucky Fried Chicken has "chickens' rights" legislation it'd like to push.

Then we could observe how well laws forced by the opposition actually protect the rights of the groups they oppose.

Sigh.

Why didn't anybody even stop to ask if women seeking to terminate pregnancies were being denied the right o see a sonogram or hear a fetal heartbeat by their doctors?

Simple: Because the purpose of the law isn't to "protect" women or to inform them of what they already know when they arrive at an abortion provider.

The purpose of the law is to proselytize, propagandize and pressure a woman out of a decision that was already made when she slogged through the slew of fake "abortion help" ads to find a legitimate provider, saved or borrowed the money for the procedure, took off work, maybe arranged for somebody to watch her kids, and perhaps traveled many miles to face down praying, hostile crowds trying to block the abortion provider's door.

The intrusion of law into this intensely private moment when a women's decision has been made is purely punitive. Meant to elicit doubt, pain and guilt. Period.

It's bad law derived from the "pro-life" canard that women are too stupid and selfish to understand what the changes in their wombs actually mean.

Fact is, there are no legions of women crying out for more state intervention into what they have the legal right to do. There are no crowds of women clamoring to have the decision they've made by walking into a clinic questioned, undermined and judged. Nor are groups of women who seek to terminate pregnancies begging to prolong the torturous and very personal decision-making process by reviewing medical information they've already seen.

Apparently though, abortion rights opponents believe that women just haven't thought much about what's going on inside their bodies at the point they've crossed the threshold of an abortion provider. So, they can't trust women to be smart enough to know what's going on inside their own wombs.

And they certainly can't trust us "little ladies" to know which "rights" we need to protect ourselves.

As reflected in this law, abortion right opponents deign to know the interior lives of women they've never met. But, when most are being honest about it, they could care less. They don't care about fear, stress health pain, finances, feeding other children, dealing with partners, or dreams. Some don't even care about dangerous pregnancies, rape and incest.

They don't care what kind of mother a woman becomes; they just care that she becomes one. They don't care about the future lives of the "unborn," just that they get born. Then, following the social politics of most abortion rights opponents, the "now born" are on their own.

By the time the grand majority of women walk into an abortion provider's office, each woman has made her decision and consulted all who need to be consulted: her own conscience, her own God and her medical provider.

Women don't need and didn't ask for added coercion from medical providers compelled by state law to "help them" decide. To protect them from their own decision.

So, to the onerous physical, financial, spiritual and emotional burdens of deciding to terminate a pregnancy already weighing on women, we can add one more: An abortion "right" that only abortion rights opponents asked for.

But, anybody with half a brain can see why Sebelius felt she had to sign the law: She's facing Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of Health and Human Services starting today. She's trying to make herself a smaller target of abortion rights foes.

As if that's even possible.

Still, when abortion rights supporters like Sebelius get scared into defining women's "rights" the way abortion rights opponents define them (against extant law - Roe v. Wade) those "supporters" may as well be working for the other side and against the real rights of women.

Those rights which the realities of our lives and the promise of our equality demand.