OK. The amendment to tax abortions in the Kansas Senate failed on a 17-22 vote. So the cave dwellers lost out on their latest creative effort to trash women's reproductive freedom. And, although the legislature passed a bill that would have barred anyone from establishing a clinic offering late-term abortions, the governor vetoed that proposal. 0-2. Hurrah.
Not that this setback for the trogs brings back Dr. George Tiller, murdered in Wichita by a hardcore anti-choicer egged on by the spew of Bill "Don't Blame Me" O'Reilly and others of his kind with lesser megaphones.
Nor does it get rid of the biased abortion "counseling" law in Kansas (which includes mandatory viewing of state-supplied photos of fetuses at various stages of development), a mandatory 24-hour delay before the procedure can be initiated, a ban on abortions at any facility operated by the University of Kansas Hospital Authority except in extraordinary circumstances, the requirement that a physician notify the parent of any woman under 18 seeking an abortion, and strict adherence to the Hyde Amendment, meaning poor women often have no means of obtaining this legal medical procedure. Nor does it put abortion-providing facilities into the 96% of Kansas counties that don't have any. But even the tiniest defeat of the anti-choice crowd can be counted as a good day.
Meanwhile, on both sides of Kansas, lawmakers in Oklahoma and Nebraska are adding more victories to the anti-choice movement's 37-year string of success in stigmatizing and making abortions harder to obtain.
Never ones to miss an opportunity, the rightists who proposed the abortion-taxing amendment added a come-on. It would have reduced the proposed 1-cent sales tax to 0.9 cents. Kansans will now be free from this idiocy. But given the past record, we can probably expect the idea to spring up elsewhere. Imagine the stink that would be raised if sales taxes were imposed on bypass surgery, or setting a broken arm, or fixing the hernias that these legislators get from carrying around their heavy brains.
But no matter. They've got an agenda. And they'll never stop pursuing it. Which is why pro-choice forces can never be complacent, whether it's a matter of the next Supreme Court justice or some new law nicking another little piece out of women's right to control their own bodies.