Just one week after the Kansas Legislature adjourned from its session, Governor Laura Kelly (D) vetoed SB 232, a bill that would have allowed courts to require that the estranged father of a child in the womb begin paying child support. She reportedly characterized the legislation as a blatant attempt by extreme politicians to "take more control over women."
"There are two people involved in the creation of that child," notes Jeanne Gawdun of Kansans for Life. "This bill would have held men responsible, especially when it's a situation where the mom is petitioning the court for child support."
The law would have applied to fathers who want nothing to do with their children or refuse their responsibilities for whatever reason.
Though the legislature cannot override this veto, it did override four vetoes of other commonsense pro-life bills.
"Our governor is so extreme and so obsessed with the abortion issue that not only did she try to stop legislation that would prevent women from being coerced into having abortions, but she also now is so catering to the abortion industry that she doesn't even want women to have the opportunity to get additional child support," Gawdun laments.
She says Kansans for Life is disappointed, but considering Gov. Kelly's "uncompromising allegiance to abortion," they are not terribly surprised.
'Safe' abortion myth debunked again and again
In New Jersey, an abortion industry watchdog group continues to draw attention to a particularly problematic clinic.
For years, Operation Rescue has been watching over Cherry Hill Women's Center, which recently made a series of calls for ambulances to transfer patients to hospitals for complications too serious for the clinic to handle.
Three ambulances were requested between early March and April.
"We have ambulance going to 502 North Kings Highway for a 35-year-old who is about 25 weeks pregnant, and she's bleeding at the Women's Center," the clinic worker said in the first call, though it is unknown whether the patient was a victim of a botched abortion.
"I'm a nurse here at Cherry Hill Women's Center," the second call began. "I have a patient that's a 23-year-old female, post-procedural, looks like she's showing early signs of sepsis. We have a fever of 101.5, pulse 130 sustained. We did give her two grams of ampicillin, 80 milligrams of gentamicin IV. Her pulse is still sustained, fever is not breaking, so we wanted further evaluation."
The third request was for a woman with uncontrollable bleeding.
The clinic does late-term abortions, which, despite the claims of the abortion industry, are more dangerous for the mother. But instead of investigating these sorts of incidents, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) is attacking a network of pro-life pregnancy centers.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Lincoln Wilson says Platkin has subpoenaed records involving donors and private correspondence over a 10-year period from First Choice Women's Resource Centers.
"He was doing this to enforce the New Jersey consumer protection statute," Wilson explains. "I don't know what an organization that provides all its services for free as a religious pro-life organization has to do with consumer protection, but that was the theory that the New Jersey attorney general was using to promote his pro-abortion agenda."
He says attorneys general from 17 states recently met to map out strategy to fight against the pro-life movement, including pregnancy help centers.
"New Jersey's attorney general has been one of the most egregious," Wilson states. "When he used his consumer protection authority, he drafted a theory against pregnancy centers, and then he asked Planned Parenthood for help on it. He's weaponized that theory that Planned Parenthood helped him draft against pregnancy centers in the state to try to get sensitive information about them."
ADF has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to block the subpoena, but that was refused. So, attorneys will pursue other legal remedies to keep the attorney general off the backs of the groups that provide needed and free help to pregnant mothers.
