Kansas 2017 legislature missing familiar pro-life faces

KFL’s lobbyist, Jeanne Gawdun, thanks Speaker Pro-Tem Peggy Mast (right) for 20 years of service and pro-life leadership.

The upcoming 2017 legislative session in Topeka will open with our staunchly pro-life Governor and pro-life majorities in the House and Senate, but without 50 familiar faces.

23 pro-life lawmakers are retiring this year: 16 pro-life state reps and 7 senators. Add to that the 21 pro-life reps and 6 pro-life senators who did not win re-election. That’s a challenging loss of the experience of nearly one-third of both chambers.

There is an “institutional knowledge” of how successful laws get accomplished and how to avoid pitfalls. Veteran pro-life lawmakers:

• are quick to catch dangerous amendments that would harm good pro-life bills;
• advise new legislators against unwise concessions;
• discourage bad proposals before they even become formal bills;
• know the parliamentary procedures and when to press leadership for action;
• are experienced at responding to constituents and pro-abortion lobbyists.

Kansas has passed great pro-life laws although it has been discouraging to have some jammed up in court. And soon, the Kansas Supreme Court will be ruling on the abortion attorneys’ proposed state right to abortion– with more extreme consequences than what we were given in Roe v Wade.

But at this juncture, we want to express our appreciation to the exiting lawmakers who stood up for the unborn, including being the first in the nation to pass the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act. They deserve our gratitude– please send them a note of thanks! House contacts and Senate contacts.

Exiting Senators:
Steve Abrams, Tom Arpke, Terry Bruce, Les Donovan, Mitch Holmes, Jeff King, Forrest Knox, Garrett Love, Jeff Melcher, Michael O’Donnell, Ralph Ostmeyer, Larry Powell, and Greg Smith.

Exiting House Reps:
Steve Anthimides, Tony Barton, Sue Boldra, John Bradford, Rob Bruchman, Will Carpenter, John Edmonds, John Ewy, Mario Goico, Ramon Gonzalez, Amanda Grosserode, Dennis Hedke, Lane Hemsley, Jerry Henry, Brett Hildabrand, Becky Hutchins, Mark Hutton, Dick Jones, Mark Kahrs, Kasha Kelley, Jerry Lunn, Charles Macheers, Peggy Mast, Craig McPherson, Ray Merrick, Tom Moxley, Connie O’Brien, Jan Pauls, Virgil Peck, Marty Read, Marc Rhoades, John Rubin, Ron Ryckman, Sr., Joe Scapa, Sharon Schwartz, Chuck Smith, and James Todd.

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Kansas activist judges narrowly survive pro-life ouster

Kansans for Life applauds all those pro-lifers who cast votes yesterday to oust activist justices on our state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.  Sadly, we missed the mark.

And while all the targeted activists on the highest two courts kept their jobs, they only held on by small margins. KFL executive director, Mary Kay Culp said,

“For now we can only hope the judges have learned a powerful lesson to stop ‘legislating from the bench’… especially as they face the most important abortion lawsuit in our state’s history.”

KFL’s priority message, “reject all but Stegall,” focused on retention elections for five current Supreme Court Justices. Justices stand for retention every six years and cannot remain on the bench if they fall below 50% approval. Yesterday, voters only gave 55-56% support to Justices Lawton Nuss, Marla Luckert, Dan Biles and Carol Beier.

Justice Caleb Stegall

Justice Caleb Stegall received 71% support, which was deserved. Appointed in 2014, he has not been part of any Supreme Court abortion animus, nor was he part of all the decisions that were soundly overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Nuss– who is the only sitting Justice to have ever been admonished by the ethics oversight committee– has lost the most public support over the last twelve years. In 2004, retention figures were: Nuss 82.2%,  Luckert, 76.5% and Beier, 76.4%. Biles was not yet on the court.

In 2010, after KFL called for pro-lifers to remove activist judges under the slogan,”Fire Beier,” the approval rating of all four justices dropped to 62-63%.

In 2012, our top judges began their own public relations campaign, in which they traversed the state to “connect” with the people. Members of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals have since made hundreds of town hall educational presentations. They also have been the beneficiaries of pro-retention media campaigns and at least $540,000.00 in television ads this year (see here).

Appellate Judge Kathryn Gardner

When it comes to abortion, the recent history of the Kansas Supreme Court has not been fair and impartial.(see here) They have twice ducked ruling on the most important  abortion lawsuit in our state’s history– the ban on dismemberment-method abortions— until they could get past the Nov. 8th retention elections.  In the interim, the Court of Appeals completely botched their ruling. The Court of Appeals was hopelessly divided on whether the state may ban brutal and inhumane procedures done on fully-formed unborn children.

Our KFL judicial initiative had a modest budget without funds for television or drive-time radio. We activated the grass roots and hosted the Better Judges for Kansas website.  Included were essays (archived here) explaining abortion bias in the courts and how the court rulings are exasperatingly untethered from the state constitution.

Appellate Judge David E. Bruns

Our secondary goal was ousting judges on the Court of Appeals who had indefensibly sided with abortion attorney’s invention of a state right to abortion, even broader than that of Roe v Wade.

The Court of Appeals is up for retention every  four years. The judges up for retention Nov. 8 who claim our 1859 founders wanted to protect abortion are Steve Leben, G.Joseph Pierron, Karen Arnold-Burger and G. Gordon Atcheson. These four felt the public’s disapproval when they received only 59-60% support, down from 71-74% in 2012.

The two Court of Appeals judges on Tuesday’s ballot who had properly let our Kansas Constitution be their yardstick on the abortion issue were David Bruns and Kathryn Gardner. The public gave Bruns 72% support (75% in 2012) and Gardner, 73% (first election since appointment).

Our Kansas Bill of Rights rests on “the right to life,” yet there is still much to be done to protect the unborn in Kansas. We ask all those who joined with us on the issue of judicial retention to stay engaged and be encouraged, as the truth is on the side of life!

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Kansas judge & state rep race tied to revoked abortionist

Kris Neuhaus

[UPDATE Nov. 9: Caddell lost with under 32% of the vote.] Michael Caddell, the husband of notorious abortionist, Kris (Ann Kristin) Neuhaus, is the Democratic candidate for State Representative of Dist. 47 in rural, northeast Kansas. Caddell, 61, is a “semi-retired” producer of left-wing podcasts and a “self-described hell-raiser” (according to the Lawrence Journal World).

Most pro-life Kansans know Neuhaus as the abortionist with two decades of disciplinary interactions from the State Board of Healing Arts, culminating in revocation of her medical license. The Board assessed her as incompetent, “showing no signs of remorse” and “incapable of successful rehabilitation.”

District Judge Franklin Theis

Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis has inexcusably indulged her efforts to get the license reinstated. The second appeal from her has been dormant in his possession for 18 months.

Judge Theis is the master of ‘delay-delay-delay’ when it comes to Neuhaus –as well as to Kansas abortion litigation. He has unduly stalled, for over five years, implementation of the abortion clinic licensure law which pro-lifers had worked ten years to achieve.

Judge Franklin Theis is on the Shawnee County ballot for retention. Pro-lifers cannot support him.

UNQUALIFIED FOR PUBLIC OFFICE
Michael Caddell’s political views are further to the left than those of Bernie Sanders and in fact balks at having to don the Democrat label because he thinks it’s too conservative! Caddell had been licensed to carry a gun through 2005 and “provided security” outside various abortion clinics–mainly where his wife worked.

Salina Post, 3-5-91: Mike Caddell, editor of the Frankfort Alternative Index, has come under fire from Frankfort residents for his views

Caddell failed repeatedly to indoctrinate rural Kansas towns with his radical socialist manifestos. (see here and here) When living in Westmoreland, in the early 1990’s, he bought three small news weeklies and in short order the staff quit and the papers folded. Residents there, in the shadow of Ft. Riley, didn’t appreciate his anti-war diatribes and style of muckraking. In Nortonville, where he and Neuhaus now live, residents were both insulted and repulsed at his attempts at journalism. As the Lawrence Journal World reported:

Nortonville’s mayor submitted copies of Caddell’s “Flying Cock-fighter” flyer to the county attorney, registering a complaint about the obscenity. “He’s a screwball…a nut,” Mayor Herman Ackmann said of Caddell. “Why he thinks he’s a journalist, I’ll never know.”

Most certainly, District 47 constituents should reject Michael Caddell for state representative, much less any public office.

NEUHAUS SAGA REVISITED
Kris Neuhaus is the failed abortionist with two decades of disciplinary interactions from the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts. It began with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency stripping her of prescription authority in 1998, followed by patient complaints and Board interventions in which she was twice labeled a “danger to the public.”

Neuhaus held on to her medical license (under conditions of Board monitoring and additional training) and eventually her sole income came from supplying George Tiller with “independent referrals” for late-term abortions. Before Tiller’s death in May of 2009, the Board had initiated revocation of the licenses of both Tiller and Neuhaus. After arduous and expensive state proceedings, Neuhaus’ license was revoked…and overturned…and revoked again– and the second appeal is not yet completed, due to Judge Theis.

QUICK FACTS ON NEUHAUS REVOCATION :

• July 2012- The state Board revoked her Kansas medical license for “professional incompetence” and “failing to meet minimum requirements for maintaining records.”  Neuhaus appealed.
• March 2014- Judge Theis overturned the revocation and sent the matter back to the Board for reconsideration.
• Jan. 2015- The Board issued a second revocation against Neuhaus on the single issue of incomplete medical files for 11 teens obtaining third trimester abortions through Tiller. The legal costs owed the Board were reassessed at just under $32,000.00.
• March 2015- Neuhaus appealed.
• Nov. 2016- Judge Theis has not yet ruled on the repayment issue with further action on the stalled appeal scheduled for phone conference next week …AFTER the judge’s retention election.

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Pro-lifers must vote against abortion on Kansas ballot

The lead story across Kansas in the closing days of October was the election-focused poll from the Fort Hays State University’s Docking Institute of Public Affairs—not a conservative source. Among the unsurprising results in a red state were that Trump is in the lead, the public is agitated over state budget deficits, and 64% of the nearly 900 “likely voters” polled wanted an end to all or most abortions.

The very unwelcome news for liberals (and their handmaidens in the media) who want Kansas judges on the bench for life, was that the poll showed Kansas Supreme Court justices who are up for retention are not “safe.”

That was truly encouraging news for pro-lifers, who see all our hard-fought laws endangered by an impending horrific ruling on abortion from our state Supreme Court. This is an unprecedented opportunity for pro-lifers to replace judges before they wreck our Constitution and declare that it has been “discovered” to protect abortion.

All society’s liberal “elites” are insulted that voters have the right to oust our top judges, but we were guaranteed that right when we amended our constitution in 1958 to give the selection of those judges over to an attorney-dominated commission.

Kansans for Life has launched a major initiative, “Better Judges for Kansas,” urging voters to dump activist judges with abortion bias– from district courts up through the state Supreme Court. Read here for articles explaining why the issue of judge retention is of paramount importance to pro-lifers.

The Kansas Supreme Court has deliberately delayed ruling on the injunction that has blocked our ban on barbaric dismemberment abortions from going into effect. Remember, this bipartisan-passed law prohibits the tearing apart of fully-formed children while still alive in their mother’s wombs.

KANSAS JUDICIAL ABORTION BIAS
Abortion is indeed on the ballot Nov. 8 in Kansas, although there is no amendment question about abortion. Informed pro-lifers will be rooting out abortion bias in judges up and down the ballot. Here are just some of the examples of this bias:

ABORTION BIAS was shown from 2004-2008 by the Kansas Supreme Court in its various dealings with then-Attorney General Phill Kline who attempted to prosecute illegal abortions; they even set up a unique and secret Court of Inquisition against Kline. The tongue-lashing of Kline by Justice Carol Beier was publicly slammed by fellow justices as “the very antithesis of ‘restraint and discretion’ and not an appropriate exercise of our inherent power.”

ABORTION BIAS was shown in 2008 when the Kansas Supreme Court benefitted notorious abortionist George Tiller by delaying a decision on sending the grand jury redacted abortion files. While waiting for this evidence, the grand jury ( whose final resport said they believed Tiller was guilty) ran out of its statutorily-mandated time…which the Kansas Supreme Court also could have extended, but did not.

ABORTION BIAS was shown from 2011-2016 in the state court of Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis with a challenge to the abortion clinic licensure law. Judge Theis repeatedly ignored motions from the Kansas Attorney General’s office to proceed with the case. In another matter, Judge Theis continues to allow meritless appeals to be heard from abortionist Kris Neuhaus in her quest to regain her revoked Kansas medical license.

ABORTION BIAS was shown since 2015 in regards to the ban on dismemberment abortions, starting in the state court of Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks who blocked the ban on dismemberment abortions. The ban is not yet in effect because:

1. the Kansas Supreme Court (realizing their likely decision would threaten their retention) refused to rule on it at the outset and then delayed the matter until after elections.
2. the Kansas Court of Appeals split evenly, which let stand Hendricks’ ruling — using all 14 judges instead of the normal panel of three (knowing six of them faced retention).

Abortion is on the Kansas ballot, written into judicial retention, and other candidate races. Pro-lifers should encourage all voters in their circle of influence to use our recommendations at

• www.kfl.org, 
• www.voteprolife.net, 
• www.betterjudgesforkansas.org 

and forward the information on social media. The unborn babies in Kansas are relying on you!

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