The Quickie: Kansas Republicans Try to Fund Anti-Abortion Centers, Again

Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.

In today’s Quickie: Kansas Republicans attempt to fund anti-abortion centers once again and bills pushing for anti-abortion videos in schools advance.

KANSAS REPUBLICANS TRY TO FUND ANTI-ABORTION CENTERS, AGAIN: Yesterday, Kansas House Republicans introduced HB 2813, a measure that claims to criminalize “abortion coercion” — while at the same time working to fund anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) that coerce and manipulate pregnant people into carrying pregnancies to term These centers are known to give pregnant patients biased and inaccurate information leading them to believe they’ve received professional medical advice.

Taylor Morton of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes explains the danger of CPCs to Kansans’ health, telling the Kansas Reflector, “Those organizations are widely considered to be unethical by health care professionals, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association”. 

If the funding measure (HB 2809) passes, the state would funnel $5.8 million into these deceptive centers, which are not regulated health clinics and often have no medical staff. Among the alternatives that Kansas could choose for its’ people’s health: expanding Medicaid, funding maternal mortality initiatives, and removing barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health care. 

Read more in the Kansas Reflector.

 

BILLS PUSHING FOR ANTI-ABORTION VIDEOS TO BE SHOWN IN SCHOOLS ADVANCE: This week, lawmakers in Iowa and Tennessee set their sights on requiring schools to show videos like “Baby Olivia”, created by anti-abortion group Live Action, as part of their sex education curriculum. The video contains medically inaccurate information about pregnancy, claiming that life begins at conception.

In Tennessee, the proposed measure would require schools to show a three-minute ultrasound or computer animation of a developing fetus as part of their “family life” curriculum and explicitly lists the Baby Olivia video as an example. Tennessee lawmakers who support abortion rights and oppose the measure cited the many inaccuracies in the video and said it is designed to be deceptive to young viewers.

In Iowa, the bill requiring the Baby Olivia be shown passed the House and Senate, with members of the Senate trying to amend the bill to not specifically require the Baby Olivia video but still require students to be shown ultrasound videos that would “the humanity of the unborn child.” Mazie Stilwell, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa, said, “We do believe that our young people deserve access to age-appropriate and medically accurate sex education…unfortunately, the prescriptive nature that remains within the bill leaves our students subject to the anti-abortion propaganda, that we have heard by those in favor of the bill. Students deserve better than what school districts would be allowed to put forth even after the amendment.”

Read more in Iowa Capital Dispatch and The Commercial Appeal