Morning eNewsletter Kansas Reflector, Oct. 3, 2021

 

Morning newsletter of the Kansas Reflector

Sherman Smith | Editor in chief Good morning. "Our bodies are not here as an object to be controlled. Our bodies are not here to satisfy someone else’s need for power. Our bodies are ours and ours alone. All bodies are good bodies. All bodies deserve full and complete autonomy." — Megan Hartford, who organized a march in Manhattan as part of the nationwide Rally to Defend Abortion Rights

Dispatch from America: Life, death, and a grim milestone Opinion from Max McCoy: TOPEKA, United States — In this capital city deep in the American interior, life continues despite a pandemic that has killed 1 of every 500 Kansans. Residents drink at quaint pubs with brews named for long-lost steam locomotives, return in person to college classrooms empty for 18 months and carry on with wedding plans that were once derailed. But just a month ago, the governor of this state took to social media to urge Kansans to get vaccinated against a virus that had filled the capital city’s largest hospital and overwhelmed its emergency department. Medical staff and other front-line workers are suffering the kind of deep fatigue typically seen only in war zones. The enemy is COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that emerged in December 2019. The virus has claimed more than 6,000 victims in this predominantly rural region known for its wheatfields and sunflower patches, a state that most outsiders still associate with the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” Aiding the infection is a populist cultural movement that is skeptical of medical science, prizes the personal freedom to make bad choices and put others at risk, and regards members of the minority party — not the coronavirus — as the real threat. This is flyover country. Most people only get a glimpse of it from 30,000 feet or as a blur through a car windshield while zipping along the interstate at 75 mph. But stop and talk to some of the people here, and you may see the flinty individualism that has been passed down from frontier times. The motto of this state is a Latin phrase that translates, “To the stars through difficulty.” While there has been plenty of difficulty for Kansans in the past year and a half, there have been precious few stars. Read more.

‘Our bodies are ours and ours alone’: Women across Kansas march to defend abortion rights Kansans marched Saturday in defense of abortion rights in cities statewide in coordination with a national response to attacks on women’s reproductive rights. Read more.

Tiny rally at Kansas Capitol seeks big change in treatment of Jan. 6 ‘political prisoners’ A handful of people showed up at the Kansas statehouse to make a case Saturday that federal prosecutors were unfair to hundreds of Jan. 6 insurrectionists who breached the national Capitol building while contesting the election loss of President Donald Trump. Read more.

Why there’s such an impasse in Congress: Some questions and answers Congress may have kept the federal government operating with an 11th-hour flurry of votes on Thursday, but several key pieces of the Democratic agenda remain in limbo. Read more.

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Jefferson County's "Grim Chieftain" Jim Lane's controversial place in history commemorated as KU's oldest

[Excerpt]The oldest building on the University of Kansas campus now has a bronze plaque noting its history, though the plaque isn’t planned to be mounted in a place passersby can see.

The marker presents a brief story of the small stone stable in the hillside at 1132 W. 11th St., now an annex for KU’s Max Kade Center for German-American Studies. That history starts with the fiery Civil War-era abolitionist who first built the stable on his land in 1862, and includes how he contributed to the early propagation of the term Jayhawk before it was adopted as the KU mascot.

The plaque’s inscription includes this little-known quote by James H. Lane, who said while rallying a group of Free-State men in 1857:

“As the Irish Jayhawk with a shrill cry announces its presence to its victims, so must you notify the proslavery hell-hounds to clear out, or vengeance will overtake them! Jayhawks remember, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,’ but we are His agents!” [End]

Read more, view the building, click here.

Op - Ed Clay Wirestone: DISINFORMATION CAUCUS OF KANSAS GOP SPREADS DANGEROUS FALSEHOODS @ Kansas Reflector

"Unwelcome Return", eNewsletter, Kansas Insider

 

FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2021 COVID's back After a long, steady drop in COVID case numbers, the pandemic has taken a turn for the worse. Positive cases and hospitalizations are climbing again in Kansas. Now, the contagious delta variant, and a lack of people who are vaccinated, are bringing Kansas back to a situation not seen since early this year. Health experts continue to urge people to get the COVID vaccine. The Kansas News Service’s Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports on the skyrocketing numbers. "These are just heroic vaccines." — Vaughn Cooper, from the University of Pittsburgh, on the positive impact of getting the COVID vaccine. Who can order masks? Who can tell you to mask up in Kansas? There's no easy answer. School districts and government officials are once again looking at mask requirements as COVID cases rise. Kansas lawmakers approved a bill earlier this year that clamped down on the ability of the governor and local governments to respond to the pandemic, but then a court struck that law down. The issue is now on appeal. Abigail Censky of the Kansas News Service reports on the legal limbo. Electric farm truck There’s good reason a Chevy Bolt EV, Tesla or electric Ford F-150 could show up in the farm store parking lot next to a line of gas and diesel trucks. Rural areas of Kansas are a good fit for electric vehicles because the longer distances driven by residents mean more savings compared to internal combustion vehicles. But as Brian Grimmett of the Kansas News Service reports, there are some obstacles to rural EV adoption. No more MD A Johnson County doctor surrendered his medical license after pleading guilty to asking drug companies for kickbacks. Dr. Steven M. Simon admitted that in 2017 he told a drug company that he would stop prescribing the company’s drugs unless the manufacturer paid him for speaking engagements. Simon got more than $1 million from drug companies, according to records. Dan Margolies reports for KCUR on the developments. Over the next few weeks, we'll be introducing our readers to members of the Kansas News Service team.  Meet Abigail Censky "I joined the Kansas News Service as the Politics Correspondent earlier this year. It’s my job to bring what’s going on in statewide politics to our audience in a way that’s clear, thought-provoking, and hopefully not headache-inducing. "That could mean covering the daily grind of the legislature in Topeka or traveling across Kansas to speak with people who are being impacted by policies. "When I’m not working, I prefer to be far away from my phone, basking in the sunshine with my partner and my senior dog." Find more of Abigail's work here, and follow her on Twitter @AbigailCensky. Enjoying The Insider? Share with a friend. Have comments or questions for the editor? Let us know what you think. Not an Insider subscriber? Sign up now. Subscribe

Loud Light Suspends Voter Registration Due to New Voter Suppression Law

Tim Carpenter: Influx of Texas, Oklahoma residents seeking an abortion drives up Kansas total in 2020 @ Kansas Reflector

 

Influx of Texas, Oklahoma residents seeking an abortion drives up Kansas total in 2020

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
June 1, 2021

TOPEKA — A surge in out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Kansas last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic moved incidence of the procedure to a level comparable to 2012 and 2013 when Republican Gov. Sam Brownback was signing bills and championing regulations to curtail access to abortion.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly kept abortion clinics in Kansas open during the pandemic by deeming the facilities essential to public health. Temporary closure of abortion clinics in nearby states factored in a rise of 626 abortions in Kansas during 2020. The state’s total of 7,542 represented an increase of 9%.

Documented abortions in Kansas tend to be divided between in-state and out-of-state women, but that trend was broken in 2020. Abortions among residents of Kansas climbed 2.7%, while the number for out-of-staters shot up 15%.

Statistics from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment indicated the increase in Kansas was linked to services provided to patients from four nearby states. Key contributors to Kansas’ influx: Texas, up from 25 abortions in 2019 to 289 abortions in 2020; Oklahoma, up from 85 to 277; and Arkansas, up from 40 to 74. The number of Missouri residents obtaining an abortion in Kansas climbed by 23, pushing that annual total to 3,201.

Jeff Colyer, an Overland Park physician campaigning for the GOP nomination for governor in 2022, said the 9% expansion of abortions reported by KDHE was a consequence of Kelly’s decision not to shutter abortion clinics in the pandemic.

“There is only one person to blame,” Colyer said. “This is the direct result of Laura Kelly declaring abortion clinics essential even while she was closing churches, schools and small businesses.”

Kelly issued detailed executive orders declaring hospitals and other businesses essential. She decided certain business operators, such as barbers and hairdressers, had to close in an attempt to thwart spread of COVID-19. Her directive restricting mass gatherings at churches was blocked after the filing of a lawsuit. Public school instruction statewide transitioned, with a few exceptions, to an online format.

A spokeswoman for Kelly said Tuesday the governor wouldn’t have a comment about the new KDHE report on abortion. Kelly is a candidate for re-election in 2022.

“Abortion is time-sensitive, essential health care,” said Rachel Sweet, regional director of public policy at Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Decisions about whether to end a pregnancy are deeply personal and should be left to a woman in consultation with her health care provider — not politicians.”

Under Brownback, KDHE records show, the number of abortions in Kansas declined in six of seven years that he served as governor. The overall total fell from 8,373 in 2010 to 6,826 in 2017 while Brownback was the state’s governor.

Following Brownback’s resignation, Colyer served as governor from Jan. 31, 2018, to Jan. 14, 2019. During 2018, KDHE said, abortions in Kansas increased by 222 to 7,048. More than half — 122 — of that surge came from out-of-state women.

During Kelly’s first year in office in 2019, abortions declined by 132 to 6,916 before expanding in 2020 to 7,542. The preliminary count for 2020 fell between Brownback-era totals of 7,598 in 2012 and 7,485 in 2013.

In August 2022, Kansans have an opportunity to vote on a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution on the issue of abortion. Passage of the amendment, labeled Value Them Both by proponents, would reverse a 2019 decision by the Kansas Supreme Court that the state constitution’s Bill of Rights protects a woman’s right to an abortion.

The state’s highest court referenced a section in the state’s Bill of Rights declaring “all men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The justices then wrote: “We are now asked: Is this declaration of rights more than an idealized aspiration? And, if so, do the substantive rights include a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, including the decision whether to continue her pregnancy? We answer these questions, ‘Yes.'”

Kansans for Life, a lobbying organization that waged a two-year struggle to secure the Legislature’s endorsement of the proposed abortion amendment, referred to the 9% increase in Kansas as “disturbing.”

Danielle Underwood, spokeswoman for KFL, said governors of Texas and Oklahoma declared elective medical procedures, including abortion, not essential and prohibited them to protect medical personnel from unnecessary exposure to COVID-19 and to conserve medical supplies.

Underwood said in a statement Kelly’s leadership during a year of expanded reliance on abortion meant the governor should now be called the “abortion industry governor.” The KFL statement didn’t address one-year increases in Kansas abortions that transpired while Brownback and Colyer served as governor.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news outlets supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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