Kansas House Passes Bills Aimed at Abortion, Sharia
No deduction for you missee! The bible tells me so!
The House passed a wide-ranging anti-abortion bill Monday, along with another bill meant to keep Kansas courts from making rulings based on foreign laws — which some supporters have said is necessary to protect the state from Muslims who would impose their legal code, also known as sharia.
The abortion bill, which supporters dubbed “The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” passed 88-31. It seeks to revamp the state’s tax code to remove all subsidies — direct and indirect — for medical costs related to the elective termination of pregnancy.
“We’re talking about not being able to deduct the cost of any health insurance that pays for coverage of abortions,” said Rep. John Rubin, R-Shawnee, one of the bill’s champions.
Rubin said the bill also prohibits including donations to institutions that provide abortions in a taxpayer’s charitable deductions.
Opponents of the bill expressed concerns about how it would be enforced, saying that tax auditors combing through a woman’s medical records to find evidence of an abortion within her deductions could run up against privacy laws established by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.
Rep. Sean Gatewood, D-Topeka, is on the Federal and State Committee that heard the bill and said he had received no enforcement information.
“We never heard a word from the Department of Revenue,” Gatewood said. “Nothing.”
Rubin said the department already audits medical deductions routinely and there may be a provision in HIPAA that allows access to medical records for law enforcement purposes.
“As with all changes to the tax code, our tax staff and auditors will study it after the session is over,” department spokeswoman Jeannine Koranda said of the bill.