How Kansas is closing in on becoming the first abortion-free state
On June 1, Speaker Mike O'Neal (R-Hutchinson) announced his retirement from the Kansas House of Representatives after nearly three decades in the Legislature. It's been a banner year for O'Neal. In early January, he was shamed into a public apology for forwarding an e-mail that suggested a physical comparison between the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and First Lady Michelle Obama, or "Mrs. YoMama," as the e-mail referred to her.
Not long after, O'Neal found himself in hot water for circulating another Obama-related e-mail. The message cited a Bible verse, Psalms 109:8: "Let his days be few and brief; and let others step forward to replace him."
O'Neal — that rascal — wrote in the accompanying text: "At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!"
Under fire for the comments — 30,000 petition signatures calling for his resignation were quickly rounded up — O'Neal apologized again and explained that he was not casually praying for the death of the president of the United States. No, he was just commenting on Obama's remaining days in office — you know, like the next line of the Psalm says: "May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow." No, nothing casual about that.
If there's something O'Neal loathes with as much furious passion as the Obamas and their big-government agenda, it's that women in his state are legally allowed to make personal decisions about whether to have an abortion. In his emotional farewell speech, O'Neal spoke of being born in "inner Kansas City" and brought to a small town in western Kansas by his adoptive parents. It wasn't until years later, he told his colleagues in the House, that the full significance of his adoption sank in.
"I realized how close I had come to being just another Missouri abortion statistic," he said, having apparently determined that Muck Fizzou Babykillers lacked the rhetorical gravitas he sought to convey.
No longer an endangered fetus, the House speaker has presided over a Republican majority increasingly hellbent on eroding women's reproductive rights. Gov. Sam Brownback has consistently promised to sign any abortion restriction that crosses his desk, and O'Neal's House has rubber-stamped virtually every piece of anti-abortion legislation brought to the floor. Only moderate Senate Republicans — an endangered species — stand in the way of making Kansas the Wire-Hanger State.
Some of these rollbacks are already quietly in effect or are soon to be law. Other, more sweeping ones will be introduced in the 2013 session. What does this mean for the women of Kansas? Read on for an unnerving tour of reproductive rights in the Sunflower State.
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