Kansas Governor Sam Brownback today signed a bill that would ensure that no taxpayer dollars are going to fund the abortion industry.
Kansas Senate Bill 436 would prioritize Title X grants, which are taxpayer-funded, by awarding them to full-service public health clinics and hospitals first. Planned Parenthood, which often receives these grants from various states, would be pushed to the end of the list because it does not provide comprehensive health care and, essentially, defunded.
Here’s more:
Gov. Sam Brownback vowed in his State of the State speech in January to make sure that “not a single dollar of taxpayer money goes to Planned Parenthood” through the Kansas Medicaid program.
But reimbursements continued. In early March, the state Department of Health and Environment said it was continuing to work on the termination of Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding “in accordance with the law.”
The termination letter came Tuesday from the department, Planned Parenthood officials said.
The letter from the state informing Planned Parenthood that it could no longer serve as provider under the state’s Medicaid program cited several reasons, including “noncompliance with applicable state laws” and “unethical or unprofessional conduct.” The organization has about a month to request a review of the decision.
The bill would make permanent a statute in the annual Kanasas budget that gives higher priority to comprehensive health care providers, according to Kansans for Life.
That’s good news for a Friday, but if the Obama administration’s response to states like Louisiana (school choice) or Tennessee (bathroom privacy) is any indicator, then they will go after Kansas as well. Because that’s what Democrats believe in: top-down control of states by an intrusive federal government. Still, Kansas can fight that.
This story is from the Daily Signal, and it’s about a new (April 2015) Kansas law that produced great effects in the last year.
It says:
Over the past several years, the number of Americans on food stamps has soared. In particular, since 2009, the number of “able-bodied-adults” without dependents receiving food stamps more than doubled nationally. Part of this increase is due to a federal rule that allowed states to waive food stamps’ modest work requirement. However, states such as Kansas and Maine chose to reinstate work requirements. Comparing and contrasting the two approaches provides powerful new evidence about the effectiveness of work.
According to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability, before Kansas instituted a work requirement, 93 percent of food stamp recipients were in poverty, with 84 percent in severe poverty. Few of the food stamp recipients claimed any income. Only 21 percent were working at all, and two-fifths of those working were working fewer than 20 hours per week.
Once work requirements were established, thousands of food stamp recipients moved into the workforce, promoting income gains and a decrease in poverty. Forty percent of the individuals who left the food stamp ranks found employment within three months, and about 60 percent found employment within a year. They saw an average income increase of 127 percent. Half of those who left the rolls and are working have earnings above the poverty level. Even many of those who stayed on food stamps saw their income increase significantly.
Work programs provide opportunities such as job training and employment search services. For example, in Kansas, workfare helped one man, who was unemployed for four years and on food stamps, find employment in the publishing industry where he now earns $45,000 annually. Another Kansan who was also previously unemployed and dependent on food stamps for over three years, now has an annual income of $34,000.
Furthermore, with the implementation of the work requirement in Kansas, the caseload dropped by 75 percent. Previously, Kansas was spending $5.5 million per month on food stamp benefits for able-bodied adults; it now spends $1.2 million.
So, I am doing a hunt to find the best states to live in, and Kansas is in my top 5. They have Governor Sam Brownback, and he has just done a magnificent job pushing conservative policies – not just social policies, but fiscal too. It’s a great state, but still edged out by Oklahoma and Tennessee, in my opinion. We’ll see what else Governor Brownback has in store, though.
You might think that all the news is bad, and that no one is putting into place any conservative policies. Well, of course the good red states are putting in these policies, and of course these policies are achieving the desired objectives. If you elect Democrats, you get Detroit. If you elect Republicans, you get welfare reform that lifts people out of dependency and into earned success. I’m sure that they feel better about not being dependent, too.
I’m Scheming Unborn Baby, and I approve of red state legislatures and governors
For the rest of Easter weekend, I have scheduled 5 posts on the resurrection. But this post is all about the wonderful pro-life legislation that our Republican governors and legislatures are enacting into law in red states.
Let’s start with something from last month, with Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.
Kentucky governor Matt Bevin promised to make pro-life issues a top priority, and Tuesday he made good on his promise.
Matt Bevin signed an informed consent bill requiring that biological facts and medical information be given to mothers in person or by real-time video at least 24 hours before an abortion.
“The overwhelming support for Senate Bill 4 in the Kentucky legislature is a positive step toward protecting the emotional and physical health and safety of women,” Bevin said in a statement before signing the bill.
Bill supporters say the reason the bill was necessary is because many abortionists circumvent the law by having mothers listen to a prerecorded message over the phone.
[…]Gov. Bevin chose this as the very first bill he signed into law. He put his signature to it as soon as legislators delivered it to him. The bill informing mothers of the medical and biological facts related to gestation and abortion becomes the Bluegrass State’s first new pro-life law in twelve years.
Pro-life legislation was previously roadblocked by the Democrat-controlled state House.
Here’s one from earlier this month, from South Dakota Governor Dennis Gaugaard.
South Dakota just became the next state to protect unborn babies from painful, late-term abortions.
On Thursday, Gov. Dennis Gaugaard signed into law a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks and penalize doctors who do late-term abortions in non-emergency situations, the Argus Leader reports. Penalties for violations of the law include up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, according to the report. The only exceptions would be in certain medical emergency cases, the report states.
[…]The state House passed the pro-life measure last week, LifeNews reported.
South Dakota has one abortion clinic left, a Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls that does abortions up to 14 weeks; however, the new bill would ensure that later abortions will not be done in the future in the state. More than 18,000 very late-term abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America.
[…]The bill is modeled after the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which has become law in 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The next one is from Indiana, where pro-life Governor Mike Pence signed a pro-life bill into law this week. This bill will prevent abortions of babies who are the “wrong sex”, the “wrong race”, or who have disabilities such as Down syndrome.
Indiana has become the second state in the nation, following North Dakota, to ban abortions on babies who are diagnosed in the womb as having Down syndrome. Gov. Mike Pence signed the bill today to protect unborn babies from being aborted simply because of a disability, race or sex.
Pence signed House Bill 1337, which would ban abortion doctors from knowingly aborting an unborn baby solely because of a genetic disability such as Down syndrome, the unborn baby’s race or sex. The bill also has several other abortion-related measures, including a requirement that aborted or miscarried babies’ bodies be cremated or buried and another requirement that abortionists who have hospital admitting privileges renew them annually. The burial/cremation requirement backs up a law passed in 2015 by Gov. Pence requiring that aborted babies’ bodies be disposed of in a humane way.
“Throughout my public career, I have stood for the sanctity of life. HEA 1337 is a comprehensive pro-life measure that affirms the value of all human life, which is why I signed it into law today,” Governor Pence said in a statement.
Pence continued: “I believe that a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable—the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn. HEA 1337 will ensure the dignified final treatment of the unborn and prohibits abortions that are based only on the unborn child’s sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry, or disability, including Down syndrome.”
The next one concerns Arizona, where pro-life Governor Doug Ducey is set to sign three pro-life bills into law.
Three pro-life bills are on their way through the Arizona legislature and soon could be on Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk.
On Wednesday, the Arizona House gave preliminary approval to the bills, and a final vote is expected on Thursday, according to the Arizona Daily Star. The bills, already passed in the state Senate, would regulate the use of dangerous chemical abortion drugs, ban the trafficking of aborted babies’ body parts and remove abortion groups from the state employee charitable giving program.
Specifically, state Senate Bill 1324 would ban dangerous chemical abortions after the seventh week of pregnancy, as the drug label recommends. Abortion clinics often use the chemical abortion drug regimen RU-486 later in pregnancy and give smaller doses than recommended, likely in an effort to save money.
[…]The second bill, state Senate Bill 1474, would end the inhumane treatment of aborted babies’ bodies by abortion clinics and research facilities. Arizona state Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, introduced the bill earlier this year, saying she was “shocked” by the undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress showing top Planned Parenthood officials selling aborted babies’ body parts.
[…]The final bill, Arizona Senate Bill 1485, would ban abortion groups from the state employee charitable giving program. The ban is a continuation of a move last year by Gov. Ducey to kick out Planned Parenthood from the program.
[…]State legislators in the Senate also are considering a separate bill that would make it easier to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The fourth story is about South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who recently endorsed Ted Cruz for President.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is openly pro-life, will sign a bill into law that would ban killing babies in the womb after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The bill, titled the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, was already passed by the South Dakota legislature on March 9; it has already been made law in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Nebraska was the first state to pass the law, in 2010.
Last September, Senate Democrats blocked the Senate’s version of the bill, as the vote was in favor, 54-42, but fell short of a 60-vote sum that would have prevented a filibuster. Ted Cruz voted for the bill while Bernie Sanders opposed the bill; Hillary Clinton has opposed the measure.
[…]In 2012, Haley signed the Opt Out of Abortion Act and the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act would protect unborn children who are born alive after a failed abortion but would be left to die afterward.
And finally, for those who like some religious liberty along with their defending the lives of unborn children, Campus Reform reports that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law a bill to protect the religious liberty of student groups on public university campuses.
WINTERY KNIGHT 