Kansas will let you have your abortion cupcakes, but you're still going to get cancer

Say this for the anti-choicers: They sure are creative. And they never stop looking for new and inventive ways to try to strip women of their basic rights. Half the time, they propose things they know will never pass, just to test the waters. Just to see how extreme they can get without facing too much national outrage that forces them to back down. The point is to keep moving the dialogue about women's health care further and further to the fringiest edges, pushing the boundaries until what was once considered absurd (and unconstitutional) becomes acceptable. Reasonable. Legal.

Like the bill in Oklahoma that would ban "the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses." You know, to protect the state from the cream of fetus sensation that was sweeping the nation a year ago. Or the the "pro-life" bill to legalize murder in South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, giving "pro-lifers" the right to use "reasonable force, including deadly force" if they believed it was "necessary under the circumstances to prevent death or serious injury to oneself or a third party." In other words, to gun down doctors to prevent them from performing abortions. Then there was the bill in Indiana requiring women to have not one but two unnecessary ultrasounds'before and after having a non-surgical abortion. Being oh so reasonable, Republicans removed the second required ultrasound from the bill. Compromise!

So now the Republican-controlled Kansas legislature is once again attempting to move the goal posts with yet another new anti-choice bill. H.B. 2253 is 70 pages long and would, among other things, "tax abortions, establish life beginning at fertilization, require doctors to say that abortion causes breast cancer and prohibit state employees from performing abortions during the workday."

So the bill would impose a tax on one specific kind of medical procedure and require doctors to lie to their patients by telling them, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, that the safest medical procedure in America may cause cancer.

But one thing the bill will no longer do?

The committee removed a provision that would have banned abortion clinic workers from volunteering in their children's schools. The measure would have banned such activities as chaperoning field trips, serving as PTA officers and baking cupcakes for school activities.

Oh no! How could the Kansas legislature abandon our children and leave them vulnerable and exposed to the possibility of eating cupcakes made by women's health care providers? Don't they know how dangerous abortion food can be? Haven't they followed the news in Oklahoma?

Well, once this bill passes, as it is expected to, and Gov. Sam "He blows a lot" Brownback signs it, as he has promised to with every anti-choice bill that lands on his desk, the legislators will no doubt work on getting the abortion cupcake ban into some new bill. They must. For the children.