The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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May 2, 2007

Kansas: Budget deal includes new abortion requirement for KDHE

The Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. — Doctors would have to tell the state exactly why they aborted viable fetuses, and state health officials would have to summarize the information in reports under a deal brokered Tuesday by legislative negotiators.

Three senators and three House members agreed to impose the new reporting policy for the Department of Health and Environment as they worked on a compromise version of the year’s last spending bill. If the agency did not comply, it would not be allowed to spend any money during the fiscal year beginning July 1.

But as part of the deal, negotiators decided the spending bill wouldn’t include related provisions for the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the State Board of Healing Arts, which licenses doctors. The House had approved all three, but the Senate hadn’t considered them.

Abortion opponents have long sought more details about why doctors perform late-term procedures, arguing additional data will be useful to legislators and give the public more information. Critics view the new reporting requirements as a step toward limiting access to abortion.

Negotiators finished their work on the spending bill Tuesday, and both chambers planned to consider it Wednesday. Approval by both sends it to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who has the power to veto individual items in budget measures.

She supports abortion rights and vetoed a reporting bill last year, but spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said, “Governor Sebelius will need to carefully review this proviso if it reaches her desk.”

Senators didn’t want to include any of the provisions in the spending bill. Sen. Dwayne Umbarger, R-Thayer, their lead negotiator, argued such policy has no place in the budget — where it would remain in effect only one year, anyway.

He said he agreed on allowing one provision to clear the way for a deal on the entire spending bill. Rep. Sharon Schwartz, R-Washington, gave the same reason for backing off two of the three provisions.

“It’s all about compromise,” Schwartz said.

State law says that after the 21st week of pregnancy, a doctor can abort a viable fetus to save a woman’s life or to prevent “substantial and irreversible harm” to “a major bodily function.” Although the law doesn’t specifically say that a major bodily function includes mental health, officials have enforced the law as if it did.

Also, obtaining such an abortion requires a second opinion from a doctor with no financial or legal tie to the abortion provider.

Since the law took effect in 1998, doctors in Kansas have performed 4,480 abortions. About 2,600, or 54 percent of them, were on viable fetuses.

Currently, doctors report each late-term procedure, whether the fetus was viable and whether the abortion preserved a woman’s life or her health. Physicians must state generally how they made those assessments.

But abortion opponents want doctors to spell out the medical condition leading to each late-term abortion when the fetus is viable. Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, said she and other abortion opponents believe most are for mental health reasons.

When outgoing Attorney General Phill Kline, an anti-abortion Republican, filed 30 misdemeanor criminal charges in December against Dr. George Tiller, of Wichita, accusing Tiller of performing illegal-late term abortions, the complaint said Tiller had diagnosed some patients with a single episode of major depression.

Tiller’s attorneys have said the charges were without merit, and a judge dismissed them for jurisdictional reasons.

But Pauls said the additional reporting will help lawmakers determine whether the law is being followed.

“That way, we can be sure the law is accurately reflecting what should occur, as opposed to what may be occurring,” Pauls said.

But Julie Burkhart, a lobbyist for the abortion rights group ProKanDo, said the real goal of the provision’s backers is to outlaw abortions for certain medical reasons, particularly mental health.

“We know that this information will be used in a year or two years or three years,” she said. “They will craft a bill and will then seek to further restrict abortion services.”

A second House-passed provision would have required the Board of Healing Arts to certify that the doctors providing second opinions on such late-term abortions have no ties to the abortion providers.

The third would have required SRS to make sure employees report suspected sexual abuse of a child to authorities.

Abortion opponents have long suspected that some doctors who perform abortions for young girls don’t report their pregnancies as evidence of sexual abuse, something Burkhart said isn’t true.

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