Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices 2008 Panelist
I feel sorry for Sarah Palin's daughter. At seventeen, she should be picking out prom dresses and colleges, not layettes.
I know "accidents happen" and they really seem to happen to "good girls" who have nothing but "abstinence only" sex education to protect them. I agree that we shouldn't harass the poor girl, but her mother has made "family values" an issue, she's a politician. She's not immune, she needs to be held accountable.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The Kansas State Council of the Knights of Columbus is backing Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., in his battle with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius over abortion. Too bad the Knights don't bring more facts to the table.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s profile is rising in national political circles.
That visibility makes her a larger target for groups that zero in on abortion with laser-like focus.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Sometimes the best news to come out of state legislatures is what they leave undone.
That was certainly the case this year in Missouri, where a fed-up state Senate said “enough” to the anti-abortion groups that annually give lawmakers their marching orders.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Matt Blunt -- the governor who accomplished everything he wanted in 4 short years -- has something in common with Sarah Steelman, the state treasurer who wants to replace him.
Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices 2008
The new Missouri anti-abortion law is a travesty. It forces doctors to declare pregnant women who want abortion incompetent or face felony charges. Declaring anyone mentally incompetent is a gigantic legal step. It means they are unable to care for themselves or their families. A mentally incompetent person is unable to work or handle their finances. Are we going to institutionalize pregnant women and take away their children? That's what mentally incompetent means. If pregnancy is the cause of this incompetence, then pregnant women won't be able to work or raise their children.
Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices 2008
With so many problems facing our area, Kansas and Missouri lawmakers remain mired in anti-abortion legislation. The latest bills treat women like chattel, assuming that women are too stupid to make the decision to have an abortion on their own.
Should Kansas and Missouri place more restrictions on abortion? Leave your comments here.
The malicious creativity of Kansas and Missouri lawmakers is boundless when it comes to interfering with the right of women to obtain abortions.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on Monday appropriately vetoed a bill that proposed shocking intrusions into a woman’s privacy and authority to make her own medical decisions.
Jonathan Bender, Midwest Voices Columnist 2008
Yale art major Aliza Shvarts, set to graduate this year, will unveil an art installation next Tuesday that will likely have people on both sides of the abortion debate lining up in protest. The story is here
By Laura Scott, The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Is Barack Obama waffling in his position on abortion, considered to be pro-choice?
Is he trying to appeal to those who believe life begins at conception, and abortion at any stage of pregnancy is the taking of a life?
Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices Panelist 2008
I'm looking forward to reading Adam Hamilton's new book, SEEING GRAY IN A BLACK AND WHITE WORLD.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130710
For too long, moderates have been drowned out by extremists on the abortion debate. The best way to reduce abortions is to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies through conprehensive sex education and by making contraceptives readily available.
Peter Brownlie, president of the local Planned Parenthood chapter, says his greatest fear about the grand jury investigation underway in Johnson County is more subpoenas for patient records.
Anti-abortion groups needed to gather fewer than 4,000 signatures to force a grand jury investigation into whether Planned Parenthood's Overland Park clinic was violating any laws. The probe has all the marks of a fishing expedition. Organizers of the petition drive claim, for instance, that all Planned Parenthood affiliates are the same, so if a clinic in another state does something that violates Kansas law, the clinic in Kansas must be doing the same thing.
A proposed Missouri initiative to ban virtually all abortions is not going to get on the ballot easily. And it certainly shouldn't.
It is not a simple little measure to limit abortions. Even in cases where a woman's life is in danger from the pregnancy, the proposal requires extensive emotional, psychological, physical, situational, and demographic evaluations of the woman before the abortion can be performed. That's ridiculous.
Even the title of the proposal is misleading. It is called the "Prevention of Coerced and Unsafe Abortions Act."
Coerced abortions? In Missouri?
Paula Gianino, head of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis region, says her group definitely will file a lawsuit aimed at stopping the drive to collect 90,000 signatures on petitions to put the law on the ballot next year.
The latest entrant in Missouri's initiative petition sweepstakes is an Illinois group seeking an almost total ban on abortions.
Bring it on. There's nothing like a proposal from the fringe to return public opinion to the center.
The Elliot Institute, an anti-abortion group in Springfield, Ill., is gathering signatures for a ballot measure that would basically outlaw abortions in all but a few rare instances. Doctors would have to certify that a woman would die or suffer irreversible disability unless her pregnancy was terminated. And (And!) a woman who regretted having an abortion could sue the doctor who performed the procedure.
