Abortion clinics need state license/inspection & webcam ban

Rajanna clinic: combination lunchroom/ drug prep/ aborted fetus storage/ patient files

When the Kansas Senate returns next Wednesday, they will take up H Sub SB 36, the abortion clinic licensure bill, which the House passed 3 weeks ago, 97-26. It is nearly identical to the clinic licensure bill that passed in the House and Senate in 2003 and 2005, and was vetoed by then-Gov. Sebelius.  The newer, important provisions of the bill will:

1. prohibit anyone other than a Kansas-licensed physician from performing surgical abortions or administering abortion by pills;
2. prohibit obtaining abortion pills via  ‘webcam”–a new business format pushed by Planned Parenthood under which women only”see” a physician via computer screen; and
3. institute an annual license renewal based on inspection, with an additional unannounced inspection during that calendar year.

Some pro-abortion Senators are telling constituents the bill is unneeded, or that it unnecessarily burdens innocent medical facilities by requiring them to become licensed abortion facilities.  Both these claims are false.

This bill IS needed and the abortion license would only be needed for any facility that performs elective abortions.

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Claim of 5 deaths by KS abortionists examined

abortion safety skewed by CDC missing death & injury data

Kansas abortionist, Herbert Hodes, has retracted his testimony to the Kansas House Federal State Affairs Committee about 5 deaths having occurred to women undergoing abortion in Kansas in the past 5 years.

However, there HAVE been at least 5 deaths at the hands of Kansas Healing Arts Board-licensed abortionists, although 3 of them did not occur on Kansas soil.  Kansans for Life has copies of the

lawsuits filed in all 5 deaths, and the allegations show an infuriating and inexcusable disregard for professional protocols and equipment.

The Kansas House and Senate will imminently vote upon a clinic licensure bill, now numbered ‘H sub SB 36′. This bill would provide state oversight to abortion businesses that have shown that, time after time, they will not police themselves.

In a March 15 letter sent to the committee, Hodes wrote, “I have researched this question and I now feel that in the more that in 30 years that abortion has been legal in Kansas only 2 deaths have occurred.”   Since he gave no names, we can only assume he referred to the publicly-known deaths in Kansas of

1. Erna Fisher, 18, in Dennis Miller’s Kansas City abortion clinic March 3, 1988, and
2. Christin Gilbert, 19,  in George Tiller’s Wichita clinic, Jan.13, 2005.

However, 3 other abortion deaths occurred at the hand of Kansas-licensed Robert Crist, a Planned Parenthood abortionist since 1980:

1. Diane Boyd, 19, at the St. Louis, MO, Planned Parenthood on Oct. 23, 1981;
2. Latachie  Veal, 17, after a late-term abortion at the Houston, TX, West Loop Clinic on Nov.2, 1991;
3. Nichole  Williams, 22, from her abortion at St. Louis Planned Parenthood on April 25, 1997.

We can’t know with any certainty the total number of women who have died from abortion by Kansas-licensed practitioners.  We would like to share a little about these women who died,

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KS abortionist reveals 5 KS abortion deaths in past 5 yrs

Christin Gilbert, 2005 Wichita abortion death

Overland Park, Kansas abortionist, Herbert Hodes, traveled to Topeka Wednesday to testify against the abortion clinic licensing bill, but while doing so, revealed something neither the committee nor the public has ever heard–that there have been 5 maternal abortion deaths in Kansas over the past 5 years!

This bombshell admission alone should prove why Kansas needs the Abortion Clinic Licensure  Act, HB 2337, which was the subject of the House Federal & State Affairs committee hearing that continues today.

So, an abortionist who came to oppose clinic licensure inadvertently gave us the very reason to pass this legislation!  This begs the question if there were that many maternal abortion deaths, how many abortion injuries are occurring ?

HB 2337 and its twin in the Senate, SB 165, are essentially the same legislation to regulate clinics that former Gov. Sebelius vetoed twice, claiming it was unneeded in 2003 and that it unfairly singled out abortion in 2005.

HB 2337 creates abortion incident reporting to KDHE and professional boards such that the death of an aborted mother is reported within 1 business day and other injuries within 10 business days.

Unfortunately, the hearing was on a shortened time frame and committee members wanting to further question Hodes learned he would not be able to return Thursday. Some of the questions to pose would be:

1) How did Hodes hear of these deaths, and were any from his business?

2) How many deaths were reported to the state Board of Healing Arts? Kansans for Life has

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Abortion zealot Burkhart continues Kansas lies

Julie Burkhart

Pro-abortion zealots like Julie Burkhart are angry that Kansas politics is no longer under their thumb.

With news that annual abortion statistics will be medically accurate, Burkhart (creator of the Trust Women Political Action Committee) wailed: “The Kansas Legislature and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) have chosen to spend precious time this year, once again,

• snooping into the private lives of pregnant women
• collect[ing] sexual histories of women and girls and
• policing the private lives of pregnant women.”

Wow!  Without those breath-taking lies, the ineffectual and factually-bereft lobbyists for Planned Parenthood and N.O.W. wouldn’t have any talking points.

Gone now from Kansas politics is the big money of George Tiller, the abortionist protection of the Kansas state Healing Arts Board director Larry Buening, and the power of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

That undercut the power structure for Burkhart, who was Tiller’s top aide and director of his ProKanDo PAC.  In early 2009, Burkhart fled Kansas, having learned that Tiller was going to lose his medical license under Buening’s Healing Arts replacement, Jack Confer.

While she didn’t last long leading a liberal political group in Missouri, Tiller’s death created a opportunity for Burkhart to assert herself as a national spokeswoman with her “Trust Woman” PAC.

With her idol, Sebelius, esconced as Obama’s HHS director, Burkhart probably hoped abortion clinics would cement enough federal money to prop up her pulpit.  But then came the November elections.

Still, Burkhart continues to pontificate and assert blatant misinformation to the media about Kansas legislative and administrative actions.  The truth is– other than the veiled reference to a 2005 abortion death (Christin Gilbert)–

NO medical history or personal identification of
any aborted woman has ever been revealed
by ANY Kansas agency or official.

However, by lying about that fact, abortion zealots

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KS media:wrong on protection of clinic licensing laws

Have you ever read a news report about Kansas traditional surgery centers –or veterinarian offices, or manicuring salons– resisting legislative proposals that would guarantee facility safety and cleanliness?

NO, of course not.  Those professions are already highly-regulated and inspected and the public would wonder why safety in those places could possibly be up for debate.

Not so for abortion clinics.

As an example, days ago,the Associated Press wrote that pro-lifers are pushing “Proposals… [to] make it harder for abortion clinics to get licensed.”

But what does that quote mean, when all Kansas abortion clinics (except Planned Parenthood, as we have explained in the past) are doctor offices that do not have any facility licenses?

In Kansas, any doctor of any training can decide to start doing abortions at anytime for any price.

However, this consumer angle escapes the AP writer.  She portrays the licensure bill in the way abortionists do– as a threat; but professional licensing is not a harassment, it is an expected protocol.

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Abortion profiteering without a KS clinic license law

actual 2005 Kansas abortion clinic "recovery room" without clean sheets or professional monitoring

With news that two state-licensed physicians, Mila L. Means and Gregory S. Linhardt, are training  to open an abortion venture in Wichita, it is worth noting that

Kansas still has no law to inspect and license abortion clinics.

Any Kansas clinic that is essentially the office of a state-licensed physician is under the authority of the state Board of Healing Arts, and, since 2006, required to adhere to minimum safety and sanitation standards.

Abortion businesses, however, are notorious for cutting safety corners and using untrained, low-wage staff (see last week’s Florida example).  In part, this is because aborted women are resistant to protesting shoddy treatment and unhygienic facilities for fear of exposing their abortion.

This is why the fight to regulate abortion clinics has been so important and why  Kansans for Life –- after years of having Sebelius prevent clinic regulation –quietly participated with a subcommittee of the Board, to design rules to at least help protect women.

In Dec. 2005, these “office-based-surgery rules” began to apply to  Kansas’ doctor-office surgical abortion clinics (numbering 6 in  2005, now 2)

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Virginia abortion clinics fear new state regulation

abortion profits= top concern

Virginia state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued an opinion Tuesday that their state health agency can institute standards for currently-unregulated abortion clinics –and abortion supporters are fuming that such oversight will close clinics.

As always, their concern is the abortion business bottom line, not sanitation and safety for women.

Like Kansas, Virginia abortion clinics largely operate as “physician offices,”  not subject to

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Veto secures Kansas’ continued abortion corruption

The fifth annual attempt to put teeth into Kansas’ 1998 late-term abortion law was vetoed Thursday by Sebelius’ figurehead, Gov. Mark Parkinson.  See comments here by KFL Executive Director, Mary Kay Culp.

Like any Kansas law, the late-term abortion ban relies on the integrity of both the Governor and the Attorney General to insure compliance.  But within weeks of the law taking effect in 1998, it was ignored, as the national media telegraphed how Michigan parents obtained a 28-week-gestation abortion in Wichita for their pre-teen daughter.  The governor and Attorney General passed the buck then, and it has been downhill ever since.

The Kansas health department (KDHE) statistics division wrongly accepts reports with non-answers where medical reasons were to have been reported by abortionists who had performed post-viability abortions.  At the conclusion of KDHE’s testimony to the 2007 joint Federal State Affairs committee investigating the late-term abortion crisis, Chairman (Rep.) Arlen Siegfreid (R- Olathe) summarized their defiance with this:

“The Department is telling us that if we expect any more than what they have got on these forms, we are going to have to change the law to get it, seeing as they would not even commit to an Attorney General’s ruling compelling them to do this.”

Yet Gov. Parkinson had the nerve to say in his veto message that the law need not be changed! Are the following facts examples of how the Sebelius/Parkinson administration enforces this law?

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Closing KS infamous “mental-health” abortion loophole

Abortionist Kris Neuhaus testified at Tiller's trial that she approved "mental health" post-viability abortions by phone

Kansans for Life congratulates Rep. Steve Huebert (R-Valley Center) on winning first round approval Monday of a ban on abortions done for “mental health” of the mother when the unborn child is viable.  UPDATE: In final action, HB 2166 passed by a veto- proof  vote of 89-33.

The first publicized flouting of the Kansas ban on viable abortions happened just weeks after the law went into effect in 1998.  The case involved a Michigan 12-year-old, then within the year, an Arizona 14-year-old, both taken to Tiller’s Wichita clinic.

State reports showed all gruesome late-term partial-birth abortions were done for the mother’s mental health! State reports annually failed to indicate imminent maternal death or physical medical conditions that would justify the destruction of babies able to live outside their mother at the time of the abortion.

The KFL-initiated 2008 citizen grand jury in Wichita saw redacted abortion files that indicated illegalities, compatible with what psychiatric expert, Dr. Paul McHugh, discovered:  phony ‘mental health reasons’ made repeatedly by the same financially dependent doctor, Kris Neuhaus.

At Tiller’s March 2009 criminal trial, Neuhaus was forced

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Kansas state medical board needs revamping

Many are anticipating what can be accomplished in Kansas under a pro-life governor in 2011, and I hope restructuring the State Healing Arts Board is on the list.

We’ve endured seven years of pro-abortion Governor Kathleen Sebelius, not only her abortionist-protecting legislative vetoes, but also her appointees on this Board, who allowed decrepit and woman-injuring abortion clinics to stay in business.

Larry Buening

Sebelius’ abortion industry aid also extended to retaining the Board’s corrupt executive director, Larry Buening, the spouse of her long-time personal staffer.

Thousands of post-viability abortions were performed in Wichita –almost all of them on non-Kansans– because Buening protected the medical licenses of Kristin Neuhaus, who made the abortion “referrals,” and of LeRoy Carhart, Susan Robinson, Shelly Sella, and the late George Tiller, who performed the abortions.

Sebelius found a cushy SRS attorney job for Buening to keep his state pension, after the legislature threw him out in 2008. [It was not on account of his abortion ties, but because of a backlog of patient deaths and abuse complaints that lawmakers gave the axe to Buening and his top legal counsel, Mark Stafford.]

Buening’s replacement, Jack Confer, had cleaned up Arizona’s medical board mess, but after a rocky 16-month attempt at rehabilitating the Kansas Board, quit in mid-October. The Board is seeking

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