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KANSAS' PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION LAW GUTTED BY MENTAL HEALTH PROVISION

TOPEKA, Aug 24 (LSN) - In court arguments last Thursday, state attorneys agreed to allow a mental-health exception to the partial-birth abortion law against the advice of the law's drafters. The notorious partial-birth abortionist George Tiller challenged a Kansas law forbidding partial-birth abortions that went into effect on July 1. The state's pro-abortion Attorney General Carla Stovall hired the law firm of Goodell, Stratton, Edmonds & Palmer to handle the state's defense.

The legislation outlawed the abortion of babies after 22 weeks of development unless two doctors agreed that the life of the mother was threatened or that the continued carrying of the child would "cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman." Tiller argued that the law's exception for "impairment of major bodily function" must include the mental health of a woman. The lawyers purportedly hired to defend the state law agreed: "In order to construe the statute as constitutional, the court must interpret the phrase 'major bodily function' as referring to both physical and mental bodily functions."

Rep. Tony Powell, R-Wichita, one of the law's writers said, "A mental-health exception is an exception that you could drive a Mack truck through....The legislation says what it says. The House of Representatives would not have passed a bill that included a mental health exception." Denouncing Stovall's tactics Powell said, "We should be defending the law for what it says, not what someone thinks it should say."

Dave Gittrich, executive director of Kansans for Life vowed to lobby legislators to amend the law should the courts grant the exception.

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