Back in April, the state legislature passed a law directing the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to author new facility standards for abortion clinics, which the staunchly anti-abortion GOP governor, Sam Brownback, signed into law on May 16. The law also requires the health department to issue new licenses each year, and it grants additional authority to health department inspectors to conduct unannounced inspections, and to fine or shut down clinics.
The department wasted no time in drafting the new rules, issuing the final version on June 17 and informing clinics that they would have to comply with the rules by July 1, as the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, told the AP that inspectors were expected at their clinic in Overland Park, Kansas, on Wednesday. There are only three clinics left in the state: Planned Parenthood's, a clinic in Overland Park, and the Aid for Women clinic in Kansas City.
The new requirements require facilities to add extra bathrooms, drastically expand waiting and recovery areas, and even add larger janitor's closets, as one clinic employee told me—changes that clinics will have a heck of a time pulling off by the deadline. Under the new rule, clinics must also aquire state certification to admit patients, a process that takes 90 to 120 days, the staffer explained. Which makes it impossible for clinics to comply. And clinics that don't comply with the rules will face fines or possible closure.
The Kansas restrictions on clinics are part of a national effort called TRAP -- Targeted Restriction of Abortion Providers -- that GOP legislatures are using to drive all clinics that provide abortions out of business. And the anti-choice brigade, that celebrates freedom and liberty and smaller, less intrusive government, is loving every minute of this.
“We have doubts that any of the abortion clinics can meet the safety requirements of the new law,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “If they cannot comply, all three abortion clinics would be forced to cease abortion operations, making Kansas the first abortion-free state in the nation.
This is the plan for red state after red state: to saddle abortion providers with impossible hurdles and then shut them down for non-compliance. Lawsuits are of course planned...but they will be a moot point if the clinics are shut down in the meantime as they almost certainly will be without an injunction against the law.
If this works in Kansas, it will be done in as many other states as possible...and with Republicans in Congress wanting to make it as difficult as possible to go across state lines to get an abortion, the plan seems painfully clear to me.
[UPDATE] Rachel Maddow had a segment on this yesterday evening.
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