Kansas Abortion Clinic Regulations Upgraded From Horrible To Horribleish
Kansas abortion providers have been battling anti-choice legislators for months over new restrictions that at one point threatened to close ever abortion clinic in the state. Now lawmakers have come back with less onerous regulations, but yesterday three doctors announced they’re going to sue again because the requirements are still unreasonable and “irrational.”
Dr. Herbert Hodes, his daughter, Dr. Traci Nauser, and Dr. Ronald Yeomans, already managed to get a judge to block the original version of the regulations. They included absurd specifications about the size of janitor’s closets, the layout of staff dressing rooms, and the precise temperature of procedure rooms, along with more reasonable requirements to have certain drugs and equiptment on hand. The Associated Press reports that this week that state published a revised set of rules. Incredibly, legislators have given up on the size and temperature requirements for procedure rooms, meaning some poor soul may wind up seeing a doctor in a 67 degree room. The state also reduced the list of required drugs and equiptment, but pro-choice groups still aren’t happy.
“They made some important changes, which is good, but unfortunately, they have left a lot in that is unacceptable. They’re still extremely burdensome in multiple ways, so they still do need to be challenged.”
For instance, the regulations still stipulate that only physicians can dispense drugs, so a physician’s assisant wouldn’t even be able to hand out Tylenol. Patients must remain in recovery rooms for up to an hour depending on how far along they were, even though there’s no medical basis for the timeframes laid out by the state.