Posted March 9th, 2010 5:58 am

What price are Kentucky legislators willing to pay to grandstand on abortion?

Here’s the price, and here’s the harm. All the following, with some critical goals for protecting Kentuckians, are now at risk of not passing because of abortion grandstanding amendments:

• House Bill 72 , a bill to provide colon cancer screening and treatment though public health departments.
• House Bill 328 , a bill meant to restore some provisions of the 2007 “Boni Bill” a social worker safety measure named after slain western Kentucky social service aide Boni Frederick.
• House Bill 358 , a bill meant to upgrade laws related to physicians’ assistants.
• House Bill 375 , a bill to remove a $20-a-month premium some low-income parents pay for a Medicaid health care program for children called the Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program.
• House Bill 192 , a bill meant to increase oversight over child deaths and critical injuries from abuse or neglect.
• House Bill 412 , a bill to improve the state’s information on alternative education programs for children with behavioral or emotion disorders or in state custody.
• House Bill 414 , a bill to enhance collection of child support.

Deborah Yetter reports on the most recent disgrace:

Four more bills dealing with child welfare and public health may be dead this session because of a Republican lawmaker’s effort to attach a controversial anti-abortion measure to them.
Rep. Tim Moore of Elizabethtown has filed language from a failed anti-abortion bill as an amendment to House bills involving cancer screening, social worker safety, health care for poor children and services from physicians’ assistants.
The move follows that of Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, who recently filed the same anti-abortion amendment to three other House bills involving child welfare, including one aimed at reducing Kentucky’s high rate of child deaths from abuse and neglect.
The proposed amendment would require a doctor providing an abortion to first perform an ultrasound and offer to show images of the fetus to the patient; it also requires a woman seeking an abortion to get face-to-face counseling from a physician or other health professional 24 hours before the procedure.
Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville and sponsor of four of the seven bills affected by the amendment, on Monday called Floyd and Moore “hypocrites” and said he is so angry that he plans to drop out of a 7 a.m. weekly prayer meeting of lawmakers they attend at the Capitol.
“These are two elected officials that are supposed to be serving the people of Kentucky, and they’re out killing all the good legislation that could help the people of Kentucky — particularly the children,” Burch said.
Equally angry is Rep. David Watkins, a Democrat and Henderson physician whose children’s health bill is affected by one of Moore’s anti-abortion amendments.
“I wish he really did care about kids,” Watkins said of Moore. “This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen.”
…

And considering Watkins is a Kentuckian, that last statement covers a lot of territory. Do Republicans see this as a two-fer? Stopping governmental programs designed to protect Kentucky’s most vulnerable children from injury and death, while at the same time imposing more psychological warfare on a woman seeking control of her own body?

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