They really know what matters in revenue-strapped Kansas. The attorney general's office there has paid $675,000 to outside lawyers to fight challenges to the state's draconian new anti-abortion laws. Never mind that the state fixed its budget shortfall this year with cuts across many programs, including schools, where Wichita teachers now scrounge for discarded pencils and buy used sneakers at garage sales for gym classes. Never mind that the model Judge Riddel Boys Ranch for juvenile offenders faces a shutdown. Never mind that much of the half-billion shortfall that forced these kinds of cuts was created by the Republican governor's reducing taxes, with a skew'can you guess?'for Kansans in the upper income tiers.
While Kansas has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending its decision to deny funding for Planned Parenthood's non-abortion services'like cancer-detecting breast exams'and to restrict private insurance coverage for abortions, Shawnee County decided last fall that defending women against domestic violence was no longer possible because of its budget shortfalls. So it transferred the responsibility to the city of Topeka. And the city council there decided that it couldn't afford to prosecute either and solved the problem by repealing its domestic violence law.
So Kansas treats women as punching bags, spending money to defend laws that deny them critical health care and refusing to protect them from assholes who literally treat them as punching bags. All in the name of budget priorities. Sickening. Infuriating. And typical.
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